Not much in the way of details, but late last year Marvel settled its lawsuit against NCSoft, makers of MMORPG “City of Heroes.”
Marvel had sued NCSoft saying the ability of players to make characters that looked very similar to Marvel heroes represented copyright and trademark infringements.
This was pretty clearly a defeat for Marvel given that a press release from NCSoft announcing the settlement said,
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. Therefore, no changes to City of Heroes or City of Villains’ character creation engine are part of the settlement.
I’ve actually been playing a bit of CoH ever since I kicked my WoW addiction. It is a pretty good game, though not nearly as compelling or enjoyable as WoW was.
At least when I play, I rarely see rip-offs of DC or Marvel characters. That’d be pretty boring anyway. Currently I’m playing The CandiMan. After all, who can stop criminals in their tracks? The CandiMan can!
Source:
Marvel vs. City of Heroes lawsuit settled. GameWinners.Com, December 15, 2005.