charactar names and costumes from other IP's

[Chelsea Rorec]

So CoH back in the day had a rule about names and costumes from other IP's not being allowed.

And i can't seem to find anything in the CoC or rules about this.

So is Homecoming not bothered about being sued ?

Because i've seen plenty of people with names and costumes from other IP's ingame.

[justicebeliever]

Is it August already?  This question crops up at least once a month...

 

HC does not police the use of copycat costumes or hero names...(for now at least)  

 

If you want more details, these are not light reading:

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/7105-trademarked-characters/

 

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/1739-whats-the-rule-on-full-fledged-rip-offs-of-other-ips-im-seeing-a-lot-of-it/

 

[Chelsea Rorec]

Good read.

Thanks

[AkuTenshiiZero]

Considering that Homecoming is in talks with NCSoft about becoming the legitimate stewards of CoH, I fully expect that in a best-case scenario these knockoff characters will have to go.  And I'm fine with that, more than fine, I've been very clear about how much I prefer when people are forced to exercise some creativity.

[Williwaw]

Many of my characters on the old servers were homages that allowed me to capture the feel of a character while only vaguely hinting at the look (and completely avoiding being generic'd).  I prefer doing that, because then I'm not "locked in" to a character concept if I want to add some off-theme power (usually Mu Mastery) or if I wanted to make them a different alignment (my Ms. Marvel/Captain Marvel-inspired character was a villain, and so was done in traditional Marvel villain colors orange, green, and purple rather than red, yellow, and blues).

Edited August 19, 2019 by Williwaw

[biostem]

1 hour ago, AkuTenshiiZero said:

Considering that Homecoming is in talks with NCSoft about becoming the legitimate stewards of CoH, I fully expect that in a best-case scenario these knockoff characters will have to go.  And I'm fine with that, more than fine, I've been very clear about how much I prefer when people are forced to exercise some creativity.

Then the best route would be to go the "due diligence" route and implement a simple list of blocked names - keep said list fairly strict, though - so "Wolverine" would be blocked, but making "Trog the Rabid Wolverine" who is completely different, should be allowed.

[AkuTenshiiZero]

3 hours ago, biostem said:

Then the best route would be to go the "due diligence" route and implement a simple list of blocked names - keep said list fairly strict, though - so "Wolverine" would be blocked, but making "Trog the Rabid Wolverine" who is completely different, should be allowed.

Of course, Marvel doesn't have a monopoly on a mammal.  However, making a Claws/Regen in yellow spandex under that name would still be a problem.  That's basically how it was handled back in the day, you simply could not create a character named simply "Wolverine," it would be rejected as if it were taken.  Anyone who tried to skirt around that would be reported and appropriately Generified (Their name would become something like "Generic#1234").

[biostem]

Just now, AkuTenshiiZero said:

Of course, Marvel doesn't have a monopoly on a mammal.  However, making a Claws/Regen in yellow spandex under that name would still be a problem.  That's basically how it was handled back in the day, you simply could not create a character named simply "Wolverine," it would be rejected as if it were taken.  Anyone who tried to skirt around that would be reported and appropriately Generified (Their name would become something like "Generic#1234").

Yes, I recall seeing that happen to people.  A key difference that I'm trying to acknowledge with my suggestion is that there really isn't a full time staff to sit around checking costumes against names and generic-ing players.  A simple block-list *should* be easy to implement, and would require far less manpower, while giving the devs the protection of saying that they have measures in place to prevent base-level infringement.

[Jeuraud]

15 hours ago, AkuTenshiiZero said:

Considering that Homecoming is in talks with NCSoft about becoming the legitimate stewards of CoH, I fully expect that in a best-case scenario these knockoff characters will have to go.  And I'm fine with that, more than fine, I've been very clear about how much I prefer when people are forced to exercise some creativity.

So your against the World-wide phenomena called Cosplay?

Also, are you the author of Aku Tenshi, or is Aku Tenshii your given name?

 

I believe that the only reason Marvel went after CoH is because they were wanting to make their own MMO. Marvel came out looking petty, and as far as I can tell they lost the Lawsuit.

Also there is this little tidbit that I never knew about.

Quote

 

Marvel vs. City of Heroes lawsuit settled

The lawsuit has always looked to conclude in NCSoft's favor; last March, the judge overseeing the lawsuit dismissed half of Marvel's complaints, citing that many of the complaints were spawned from characters made in the game that Marvel employees, themselves, had created.

 

 

CoHH is a fricken non-profit shard of City of Heroes/City of Villains; no company is going to come after them, with how popular Cosplay is now.

Quote

Comiket attracts hundreds of thousands of manga and anime fans

Even if most of the people who attend do not Cosplay themselves, they at the minimum accept it, and with how easy it is to use the internet, with smartphones and instant access, any company who went after CoHH would get buried under the bad press, in pretty much every language in the world.

 

 

NCSoft decided to put in their policy for CoHV because they did not want to mess with another lawsuit... and well, their NCSoft.

 

 

 

Edited August 10, 2019 by Jeuraud