Marvel sues City of Heroes

Marvel Enterprises Inc. is suing two firms behind a computer superhero role-playing game it claims allows players to make virtual characters that are too similar to ``The Hulk,'' ``X-Men'' and other heroes in the comic book company's stable.

The lawsuit claims South Korea-based NCSoft Corp. and San Jose-based Cryptic Studios Inc. violated Marvel's trademark characters in their game ``City of Heroes.'' Marvel seeks unspecified damages and an injunction against the two companies to stop using its characters.

The personal computer game enables players to design superheroes' look and abilities and then battle against other players' characters in a virtual city. Like similar so-called massively multiplayer role-playing games where thousands of players can be playing simultaneously at any given time, ``City of Heroes'' claims to offer a myriad of combinations so that no two players' characters are exactly the same.

But in its lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court, 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.''

The company singles out a game feature for creating ``a gigantic, green, 'science-based tanker'-type hero that moves and behaves nearly identically'' to the ``Hulk.'' Players can also create a ``mutant-based'' hero powers and a costume nearly identical to Marvel's ``Wolverine,'' according to the suit.

The New York-based company also took issue with the ability of players to go so far as to name their superhero creations after Marvel comic book characters.

I play City of Heroes. Religiously. I am also a comic book fan. I also know that this is not the first time that Marvel has sued countless game companies and fan sites that enable the use of Marvel characters in games. The real issue is that the naming is supposed to be policed by the internal GMs(game masters). These are paid employees that make sure everything covered under the EULA is enforced. Copyright materials are prohibited according to the EULA, because characters created in the COH game universe belong to Cryptic Studios and NC Soft.

In the game I have seen the following copyrighted characters (not all Marvel): Superman, Batman, Wolverine, The Hulk, Nightcrawler, Zangief, Guile, all the Agents from the Matrix, The Ghostbusters, and Warhammer 40k marines. When they enable trenchcoats, I'm sure that we will see all sorts of Neo variants.

Marvel needs to grow a thicker skin, or come out with their own MMORPG. I think the real basis for the lawsuit is the character ownership clause in the EULA. Enforcement is the responsibility of the GMs, which have been a bit lax of late. Hopefully, they will staff up, and institute name data-mining to get rid of this junk lawsuit.