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Settlement in Marvel vs. NCSoft Lawsuit

Posted by Zonk on Thu Dec 15, 2005 07:34 AM
from the well-done-true-believer dept.
Role Playing (Games) Government The Courts News
GrnArmadillo writes "The official City of Heroes site is reporting that Marvel's lawsuit over the CoH character generator has been settled. It looks like CoH essentially won, though it's unclear what price, if any, they're paying for the victory. The key portion of the brief press release: 'The parties' settlement allows them all to continue to develop and sell exciting and innovative products, but does not reduce the players' ability to express their creativity in making and playing original and exciting characters ... While the terms of the settlement were not disclosed, all parties agree that this case was never about monetary issues and that the fans of their respective products and characters are the winners in this settlement.'" Commentary is available on Gamespot. Glad this is over. This has been pending almost as long as I've worked here.
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Walkiry (and many, many others) writes "In yet another copyright bickering lawsuit, Marvel is suing NCSoft and Cryptic Studios over their MMORPG City of Heroes due to copyright infringement, apparently because of the costume creator. "Marvel argues that the game's character creation engine easily allows players to design characters that are virtual copies of its own superheros, including 'The Incredible Hulk'. Marvel seeks unspecified damages and an injunction against the two companies to stop using its characters." There are quite a few people suspicious that this is nothing but an effort by Marvel to undermine Cryptic Studios' successful game to prepare for the launch of their own comic book based MMORPG." USA Today has the story as well.
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In the wake of yesterday's formal announcement of the Marvel Online title, Gamespot has an interview with 'Cryptic Studios' creative director, Jack Emmert, and Marvel Entertainment's vice president of Interactive, Ames Kirshen — as well as Microsoft Game Studios' senior director of business development, Frank Pape. They discuss the details of a game on Windows and the 360 (both will play in the same world), how the game will reflect the comics, and why Cryptic is involved. From the article: "Cryptic with their great pedigree, their great track record on the City of Heroes franchise — it was the perfect partner. We have access to all the characters in the history and lore of the Marvel universe to put into this game. So we're super excited. I mean this is, for an MMO player and for folks on the console that want to play an MMO and bringing in a new audience, it's as compelling a statement as we can make." And here I thought they were going to talk about that little multi-year lawsuit between Cryptic and Marvel.
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Settlement in Marvel vs. NCSoft Lawsuit 31 Comments More /

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    • Re:personally (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Are you retarded?
    • Sure... Except that Cryptic Studios and NCSoft both at least have offices stateside. The race card rarely flies in todays world.

      I'll agree that Marvel thought they had a case, and that (despite what they say) it's all about the money. But I don't think it was racism. There's no need to get more basic than greed to find a cause for the case here.
      • Fact check please. A: Cryptic Studios is the developer of City of Heroes and was the direct target of the lawsuit.
        B: Cryptic is based in Los Gatos, California
        B: NCSoft is NOT an American company. Their headquarters is Seoul, South Korea. NCSoft Austin is the North American branch. NCSoft Austin is based in Austin, Texas.
        C: NCSoft does not own Cryptic. NCSoft is the publisher for City of Heroes/Villains.
        D: It is not simply competition. Litigating another company simply because you have a bigger wallet an

  • Great! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 15 2005, @08:18AM (#14263407)
    Now that this is out of the way, how long before we get City of Asia, complete with tentacle monsters, transforming magical girls, rubber suited lizards, and jumpsuited sentai heros? ... not that I'm interested in playing as a tentacle monster. Really.
    • Hey! I'd play that! Where can I preorder? I can't wait to punish villainy in the name of the Moon!
      • Please, please go play that, and help to take the anime influence out of CoX. It's hard enough trying to get a western Super-Hero flavor in City of Heroes when every third person who is logged in has character name based on Sailor Moon or La Blue Girl or whatever the fuck else has huge eyes, tentacles and snot bubbles.

    • No mechas? Bah, I'm not playing that.

  • Is this really a victory? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by KingSkippus (799657) * on Thursday December 15 2005, @08:38AM (#14263494) Homepage Journal

    Hey, I'm happy I can still design my characters to my heart's content, but part of me really wishes that there were no settlement. Part of me wishes that they had fought it out in court.

    Why? Because I'm pretty durn confident that NCsoft would have won, and it would have put an end to this silliness once and for all. As it stands, now we can look forward to other companies suing over this same thing. The person being sued will see this and think, "Geez, NCsoft settled their case, I'd better settle, too," and the company suing gets rewarded with "undisclosed terms" for their bogus lawsuit.

    I also think there's something fundamentally wrong with the terms of the settlement being undisclosed publically. I'd like to know if the terms were something along the lines of, "[NCsoft:] You drop your lawsuit and pay our legal expenses, and we agree not to countersue you or make you look like an idiot in our press release." Given Marvel's semi-defeat earlier this year, I can't imagine that either Marvel's or NCsoft's lawyers would think that Marvel might actually win. If a lawsuit is filed in a public court of law and my tax dollars have to pay for judges and other public servants to process these cases until they're settled, I think the final outcome should be public! Cough it up, NCsoft, what did you agree to other than not changing the costume editor?

    (sigh...) Well, I think it's interesting that Marvel is coming out with their own MMORPG for the Xbox 360. I wonder who's in line to sue them even as I write this? I don't know about you, but I'm going to have a really hard time feeling sorry for them.

    • DC vs. Marvel as soon as someone makes a Superman or Batman clone?
      • Only if the DC clones are ridiculously more powerful than their Marvel counterparts and have much shallower characterizations.
        • "Watch out! Superman is laying in with a haymaker!"

          Thug loses 1/6 of his health and falls for 3 seconds, then gets back up.

          Ya, in these games, looks are not ablilties.

          And just wait until Supes loses over half of even that low level of ability as happened with the "ED" nerf.
      • Eh, there's plenty of Superman and Batman clones around. Marvel's got the the Squadron Supreme [wikipedia.org], a JLA clone invented in the 1970s for an unofficial JLA/Avengers crossover (the same year, DC created an Avengers clone to meet the JLA). Hyperion and Nighthwak are the Superman and Batman characters. Image introduced Supreme (no connection) in the 1990s, a Superman-like character who accumulated many elements of Superman's mythos that DC discarded in the mid-1980s. The Authority's Apollo and Midnighter are v
    • On the flip side, there is no-zero-none reason for CoX's costume creator to offer costume pieces that are identical to those used by Marvel characters (e.g. A visor that looks like the one Cyclops wears). There's no reason for CoX's claws powers to resemble Wolverine's.
      If Marvel wants to complain that the creator lets you make a Big green guy with purple pants, that's a bit much. But anyone with a little common sense is going to say those claws look an awful lot like Wolverine's. Out of all the ways claws c
      • Well, the claws do come out of the back of the hand, but they're sticking out of little boxes on the back of the hand, and don't "come out of the hand" itself, technically.

        But yes, if they wanted to do claws without infringing, it should have been literal giant hand claws like a bear's or something.

        Although I suppose Marvel will still complain because they duplicate the claws of Hypatia Lee or whoever Wolvie fought in X2.

        This kind of thing, though, will only get worse in the future as more and more capabili
        • At the future point where character design can be done with a sketchpad, the controlling agency will no longer be entirely responsible for the infinite possibilities that sketchpad offers.
          A cyclops-like visor, however, is one of a limited number of eyepieces (I think there are around 30) that a user might choose for their in-game avatar. Why is it even a choice, if it can be so strongly identified with a single character?
          Likewise claws: There's only one character in all of comics who has 3 claws coming out
      • But I also think it's a bit much to say, "Okay everyone, Marvel's done metal claws coming out of a guy's hand. From now on, no one can ever do metal claws coming out of someone's or something's hands. It's totally off-limits."

        I disagree on the visor thing. Does it bear a passing resemblance to Cyclops's? Maybe, but it's just that—a passing resemblance. It also kind of reminds me of Geordi's visor, the cylons' visors, etc. I mean, an optical visor is just an optical visor, and they've been a stap
  • the fans of their respective products and characters are the winners in this settlement

    Amazingly enough, that's probably actually true for once. Hooray for the consumer.

    Although I'm sure the lawyers got their pound of flesh, too.

  • This is good news. When I spoke with the Jack Emmert in February, he told me of several features and completed code that they coulnd't release because of "another company having to do with comicbooks, and a court". 8)

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