It looks as though City of Heroes has an excellent chance of emerging from Marvel’s copyright infringement lawsuit unscathed, due to today’s announcement of several charges against NCSoft and Cryptic Studios being dismissed. Agreeing with the defendants’ assertion that many of Marvel’s exhibits were “false and sham,” the judge pulled the plug on more than half of Marvel’s claims. NCSoft and Cryptic have ten days to respond to the rest of the case’s claims, and file any counterclaims. Not quite a resounding “Bad Spidey! No biscuit!” But the comic book giant may soon see the rest of its frivolous case go down in flames.
6 comments
Comments are closed.
what exactly made Marvel think it could get away with this? Have they won similar lawsuits in the past? Seems like the whole thing was a fool’s errand.
If they win, they lock down a chance to come up with their own MMORPG and get in on the action. If they lose, in the interim they may negotiate a little piece of the action for themselves in one way or another (like a settlement or a licensing fee). It’s not bad for their business because the amont of folks that might boycott their books because of the suit is negligable.
Perhaps Marvel shouldn’t go into MMORPG in the first place. Only mindless drones are willing to pay-2-play.
Mindless Drones? Ummm…..
Better “mindless drone” than “EverCrack addicts” (does not only apply toward hardco-… err, dedicated EQ online gamers). 😉
Well, one big thing Marvel seemed t hope was that NCSoft would throw so much money at keeping Marvel off its back that CoH would suffer and Marvel’s MMORPG would have no competition… which doesn’t say much for Marvel’s game.