Copyrighted material

[Carravaggio]

How heavily do the creators come down on copyrighted material in COH?
I ask because a few people have warned me some of my characters might be in danger of being an infringement, but i frequently see toons that have no attempt at all to mask who they are emulating.

Is the generic process a common one? Are people 'genericized' for characters that look similar, use a similar name, or both? I know the short answer is don't use anything that could be conflicting and you'll be fine, but I'm more curious about it than worried, and thought I'd see what FR's experience with it has been.

Below is a small SG I've made with friends. Now i think this sort of thing would be fine, and not be troubled over it. Would I be right in assuming so?


I'm not asking for quotes from the official rules, just thoughts, experiences and stories related to give me an idea of the actual process.

[gdaybloke]

AFAIK it's mainly a visual thing.

I wouldn't worry about your Quantum Four - the costumes can't be mistaken the Fan4, and the names aren't remarkably similar to the originals either.

Your others though - the names and looks are very obvious imitations of protected IP. I'm not sure how closely the mods are looking at toon design these days, but if someone reported them, I wouldn't be surprised if they got genericized.

[Midnight]

Well, I know that Ancient Spirit got a got a blaster who is very similar to Johnny Blaze to level 50 and still hasn't been genericized. It really depends on the look and the name. Those guys probably wouldn't get hit, simply because they're just far enough off both name and look-wise.

[JKCarrier]

I think the developers pretty much depend on the players to report violations. If you see a blatant trademark infringement running around, it's probably just because no one has snitched them out yet.

[Lionheart]

I think the developers pretty much depend on the players to report violations. If you see a blatant trademark infringement running around, it's probably just because no one has snitched them out yet.

This is true for visual ripoffs, since they have no way of spotting those easily.. Naming, they actually have a filter, at least for Marvel owned names. My wife had a character named American Avenger; red, white, and blue costume, female, electric/energy blaster. She got genericized because Marvel owned the name. Marvel's American Avenger was a male, who's costume bore no resemblance to my wife's character, had no super powers (a hand-to-hand type if I recall), and didn't even wear red, white, and blue. To make matters worse, this character never appeared in a Marvel comic, though he was mentioned in a USAgent comic. Marvel owns the rights to the 1940's comic he was in.

We'd never heard of him, so there was no intent to copy names. We were over level 20 before the name was caught, but it was shortly after the Marvel MMO announcement was made.

[Alaric]

I think the developers pretty much depend on the players to report violations. If you see a blatant trademark infringement running around, it's probably just because no one has snitched them out yet.

This is true for visual ripoffs, since they have no way of spotting those easily.. Naming, they actually have a filter, at least for Marvel owned names. My wife had a character named American Avenger; red, white, and blue costume, female, electric/energy blaster. She got genericized because Marvel owned the name. Marvel's American Avenger was a male, who's costume bore no resemblance to my wife's character, had no super powers (a hand-to-hand type if I recall), and didn't even wear red, white, and blue. To make matters worse, this character never appeared in a Marvel comic, though he was mentioned in a USAgent comic. Marvel owns the rights to the 1940's comic he was in.

We'd never heard of him, so there was no intent to copy names. We were over level 20 before the name was caught, but it was shortly after the Marvel MMO announcement was made.

To make matters even worse, that character wasn't even called "the american Avenger" in the afore-mentioned 1940's comic, as I understand it. It was the name of the feature the character appeared in.

Check here for more info.

[BlueBard]

That kind of thing actually doesn't surprise me.  Persons who knowingly infringe deserve what happens, but unwitting victims of the whole process are kind of inevitable.

The thing that really arouses my curiosity is the possibility of 'retroactive' copyright infringement... or at least the appearance of same.

For example, suppose that next week Marvel introduces a character named 'Rezzonate' which is remarkably similar to my own (teleporting AI energyform with electromagnetic powers).  Technically speaking, my character on CoH would predate that.  But if challenged, would the reaction be to simply 'genericize' the character instead of defending it?  Or would someone actually check the facts and reject the claim?

I'd guess that NCSoft isn't going to spend any time or money on legal defense for players' characters even if the C&D were essentially without merit.  How that would be handled would be interesting indeed.

Is anyone aware of a case in which NCSoft received a meritless complaint of copyright infringement and let the character stand as is?

[electro]

I use copyrighted chars sometimes & have been playing for 3 years without any trouble - I don't use ingame textures thow when making my copyrighted chars because that would infringe upon the rules & I name the character something completly different - To top it off I write a story in the bio of how that character got his powers that relates to the CoH/V world (like I get my super-speed from an Lord Recluse Experiment etc... ) - Last i make sure that patterns that i'm overwriting look extremly different than the chars normal patterns as seen in the example pics - So theres no real violation here because i'm the only person who knows what i look like - Plus the game makers let me mod & so its a Feature I use alot, everyone knows it's more fun to make your own original Super-Heroes so 90% of my chars are original from my own comics - I do however see people that use ingame textures to make Iron Man, Xena,  Thor Etc... and name them Mighty Thor or XENA-19 and still make it to high lvls (25 & above) so i'm not really sure how well anyone is paying attention :blink:

Wolverine made by request showing before and after textures



name : BLACK MINX