New efforts!

[duane]

I'm new to these forums so I suppose I don't know if there are specific kinds of rules to follow, but seriously, is there a reason why my post got deleted?

Don't take it personal. I have had a couple of mine removed as the moderator wanted to curtail a conversation.   This is a bunch of people sitting around waiting for news to drop, but focus is needed at times.

[Arcana]

That makes no sense to me, unless NCSoft specifically trademarked those words for that purpose (which, from the lack of a "™" after every class name, doesn't appear to be what they did).  It's like saying, if I were to make a fantasy game, I couldn't call a class a Mage, call its resource Mana, and have it cast fire and ice spells, because WoW already has a Mage class with Mana points and fire and ice spells.

Why does this class name limitation only apply to CoH?  (Especially since, as I said, another superhero game already has Scrapper and Blaster classes, which are pretty much the same in concept as CoH Scrapper and Blaster classes)

Copyright is not about individual words, but about protecting specific expressions of ideas.  You can't copyright "scrapper" and "blaster" but the closer you get to directly ripping off City of Heroes, the more likely it is a court would rule you were infringing.  So obviously, if you write "scrapper" that's not infringing.  But if you make an MMO and call a class "scrapper" that's potentially, but not likely infringing.  If you make that scrapper something with defensive powers and offensive melee powers that starts to get closer.  If on top of that your MMO has scrappers, tankers, blasters, defenders, and controllers, all explicitly with the same kind of powers they had in City of Heroes, you're now pretty much guaranteed to be considered infringing.

As Joshex mentioned, collections matter.  But its more complicated than that.  The question is really, could NCSoft prove that you directly copied City of Heroes, and were the things you copied themselves worthy of protection.  Its kind of obvious you copied, so the question comes down to whether the things you copied are worth copyright protection.  I would say that the notion of a scrapper isn't worthy of protection as it isn't an original idea.  But the notion of scrappers, tankers, blasters, controllers, and defenders explicitly called those things is probably an original idea worthy of protection.  The notion of scrappers, tankers, blasters, controllers, and defenders with the specific power types they had in City of Heroes is absolutely an original idea worthy of protection.

[Inc42]

That makes no sense to me, unless NCSoft specifically trademarked those words for that purpose (which, from the lack of a "™" after every class name, doesn't appear to be what they did).  It's like saying, if I were to make a fantasy game, I couldn't call a class a Mage, call its resource Mana, and have it cast fire and ice spells, because WoW already has a Mage class with Mana points and fire and ice spells.

Why does this class name limitation only apply to CoH?  (Especially since, as I said, another superhero game already has Scrapper and Blaster classes, which are pretty much the same in concept as CoH Scrapper and Blaster classes)

WoW also very clearly did not invent the concept of a mage as described. You can find that exact same set up in earlier video games, in tabletop games, or even stories. Trying to trademark this would be like how Candy Crush Saga tried to trademark the word "Saga" being used in the title of a game.

Another way to look at this is the old lawsuit Marvel did against CoH. They could not stop them from doing a claws set, or a regen set, or giving them both to a scrapper. They could not fault the individual parts used to make a Wolverine costume, but when everything is combined into Wolverine that is where they can step in. If CoT used the term "Blaster" but none of the other AT names, fine. If they pull everything from another game that is an issue.

[Twisted Toon]

I'm new to these forums so I suppose I don't know if there are specific kinds of rules to follow, but seriously, is there a reason why my post got deleted?

Occasionally, when I try to make a post. someone else will have posted something while I was i the process of writing my post. When I hit the "Post" button, I get a little warning message that is almost easy to miss that states that someone else has posted something since I started my post and it won't actually post my message until I hit the "post" button again.

It could be possible hat something similar happened to you.

[Joshex]

Copyright is not about individual words, but about protecting specific expressions of ideas.  You can't copyright "scrapper" and "blaster" but the closer you get to directly ripping off City of Heroes, the more likely it is a court would rule you were infringing.  So obviously, if you write "scrapper" that's not infringing.  But if you make an MMO and call a class "scrapper" that's potentially, but not likely infringing.  If you make that scrapper something with defensive powers and offensive melee powers that starts to get closer.  If on top of that your MMO has scrappers, tankers, blasters, defenders, and controllers, all explicitly with the same kind of powers they had in City of Heroes, you're now pretty much guaranteed to be considered infringing.

As Joshex mentioned, collections matter.  But its more complicated than that.  The question is really, could NCSoft prove that you directly copied City of Heroes, and were the things you copied themselves worthy of protection.  Its kind of obvious you copied, so the question comes down to whether the things you copied are worth copyright protection.  I would say that the notion of a scrapper isn't worthy of protection as it isn't an original idea.  But the notion of scrappers, tankers, blasters, controllers, and defenders explicitly called those things is probably an original idea worthy of protection.  The notion of scrappers, tankers, blasters, controllers, and defenders with the specific power types they had in City of Heroes is absolutely an original idea worthy of protection.

Yes indeed, it's not only about what they are called, but what they can do. You wouldn't believe how many C&D's have been handed out to indie comic book artists for copying superman's abilities, many of which were found out cause they tried to pitch their comic to DC comics at a convention.

However, if you are willing to add new features to the blaster then it becomes your own.

Marvel has apparently done this, OR they are performing corporate baiting (Oh yeah, we're big, were bad, we has money and lawyers! just try to sue us you poor NCSoft [Expletive deleted], just face it, kiss your concept goodbye, we're too big to tango with!)

Corporate Baiting is a concept to use your power or skill to see how much you can get away with before you get repercussions. It's not nice, and it may not be legal, but courts wont open the case for anyone against them without the other party's move first. If NCSoft feels it's not worth the court time, or feels they could possibly be bankrupted by the court time then they will stay silent while marvel taunts them with a full moon.

But if you tried it: [insert lawsuit here], [insert extra charges here]

However I'm sure something is different, "relatively the same" isn't "the same". Of course a ranged AT can be called a blaster, but does it have the same inherent ability? are it's attacks and power schemes the same? are it's stats similar? does it use a different stat system? these things matter.

WoW also very clearly did not invent the concept of a mage as described. You can find that exact same set up in earlier video games, in tabletop games, or even stories. Trying to trademark this would be like how Candy Crush Saga tried to trademark the word "Saga" being used in the title of a game.

Another way to look at this is the old lawsuit Marvel did against CoH. They could not stop them from doing a claws set, or a regen set, or giving them both to a scrapper. They could not fault the individual parts used to make a Wolverine costume, but when everything is combined into Wolverine that is where they can step in. If CoT used the term "Blaster" but none of the other AT names, fine. If they pull everything from another game that is an issue.

I'm not even sure Fire Emblem copyrighted the 'Mage' AT, and that's Original Famicom Ancient. before that there was MTG, and before that was D&D, they all had the mage AT in one way or another. Mage (just like Blaster), is public domain, it's what your mage does and how your mage is built that defines weather it's infringing on other mages.

[Arcana]

Yes indeed, it's not only about what they are called, but what they can do. You wouldn't believe how many C&D's have been handed out to indie comic book artists for copying superman's abilities, many of which were found out cause they tried to pitch their comic to DC comics at a convention.

However, if you are willing to add new features to the blaster then it becomes your own.

Not exactly.  Taking an original work and modifying it in some way is known as a derivative work.  One of the legal rights granted by copyright is the right to make derivative works.

The catch is that the derivative work is itself a work with copyright rights.  Which means the original copyright owner doesn't automatically own derivative works even if created illegally.  As a practical matter, copyright owners generally acquire the rights to illegally created derivative works by various means simply because the creator of such works has no legal right to do anything with that work, making it worthless to them.  But while you own the things you create as a creator under (US) copyright law, if those works include someone else's work any use or distribution of that work would still infringe on that other creator's rights.

A hypothetical illustrates the subtle legal points.  Suppose I make a statue of Superman and try to sell it to the city to put outside of city hall.  Warner can sue me, because I am using the copyright protected creation of Superman.  I cannot legally sell it, and the city cannot legally display it.  However, if Warner takes pictures of my statue and then starts selling them, *I* can sue *them* because they are using my creation illegally.  The fact that they own "Superman" doesn't mean they own the specific expression of Superman within that statue.  That statue now enters the legal limbo in which I own the specific expression of Superman, but Warner owns the character of Superman itself.

Generally, what happens next is that Warner sues me for copyright infringement, and as part of the legal settlement I agree to surrender rights to that statue.  Then they can do whatever they want with it.  Or I agree to pay Warner a licensing fee, and then I can sell it to the city.  Then the city itself would need a separate license from Warner to publicly display it, or *they* can get sued.

This actually was discussed many, many, many times on the CoH boards in the context of what NCSoft "owned" when it came to player created content.  Within the US, the combination of the NCSoft EULA and US copyright law basically said this: NCSoft owns the rights to the City of Heroes material itself, including story, plot, character, and NPC descriptions, along with actual game art assets (i.e. cape textures, faces, costumes, etc).  But when I make a character, *I* own that actual creation as the creator of the work.  However, the EULA requires me to grant to NCSoft a non-exclusive, unlimited license to use my work in any way they see fit.  They could take my characters and put them on the box art of the game, say, to help sell it.  But I can't just use my characters in any way: I can use everything *I* created for them, but I cannot reference CoH material without permission.  If my origin story mentions Lord Nemesis or Crey Corporation, I can't use that without permission.  I *can* sell a novel about my main character, so long as the only things I mention are things I explicitly created, even though those things were used in the game.

The one legal point of controversy came down to the issue of whether the EULA required players to give NCSoft ownership of their creations.  US copyright law seems to exclude that as a possibility, but some players believed that the act of "agreeing" to the EULA was sufficient to satisfy US copyright law that copyright transfers must be explicit as to the work being referenced, in writing, and signed by the creator.  Personally, I think that theory is ludicrous in the extreme, but with a good enough lawyer who knows what a court might say.

[Isotope]

It was definitely there before, because I was periodically checking back to see if anyone had further replied. I had mentioned that I'd heard that the CoT project seemed to be spinning it's tires as of late. Are we not allowed to mention stuff like that?

[darkgob]

It was definitely there before, because I was periodically checking back to see if anyone had further replied. I had mentioned that I'd heard that the CoT project seemed to be spinning it's tires as of late. Are we not allowed to mention stuff like that?

That's certainly not the case at all, since I made posts with similar comments recently (a month ago? who even remembers) and I don't believe they were ever removed.  If you had broken a rule, the moderator who deleted it would have PMed you with an explanation (the only time when that usually doesn't happen is if your post was deleted with a bunch of others from other posters because it was all part of a pruned conversation).

[blacksly]

Copyright is not about individual words, but about protecting specific expressions of ideas.  You can't copyright "scrapper" and "blaster" but the closer you get to directly ripping off City of Heroes, the more likely it is a court would rule you were infringing.  So obviously, if you write "scrapper" that's not infringing.  But if you make an MMO and call a class "scrapper" that's potentially, but not likely infringing.  If you make that scrapper something with defensive powers and offensive melee powers that starts to get closer.  If on top of that your MMO has scrappers, tankers, blasters, defenders, and controllers, all explicitly with the same kind of powers they had in City of Heroes, you're now pretty much guaranteed to be considered infringing.

As Joshex mentioned, collections matter.  But its more complicated than that.  The question is really, could NCSoft prove that you directly copied City of Heroes, and were the things you copied themselves worthy of protection.  Its kind of obvious you copied, so the question comes down to whether the things you copied are worth copyright protection.  I would say that the notion of a scrapper isn't worthy of protection as it isn't an original idea.  But the notion of scrappers, tankers, blasters, controllers, and defenders explicitly called those things is probably an original idea worthy of protection.  The notion of scrappers, tankers, blasters, controllers, and defenders with the specific power types they had in City of Heroes is absolutely an original idea worthy of protection.

Another point to add is that the closer you get to clearly infringing, the more likely you are to eat a C&D letter just to see if you're willing to spend the legal costs to try to defend that you're NOT infringing. So even if you have a reasonable argument to make in court, it may cost you money... so the closer you get, the lower your odds are of winning, and the further the IP owner is willing to pursue the case. It's not so much a red line as a black hole (heh)... the closer you get to infringing, the more likely you are to get sucked into a black hole (the court system).

[Arcana]

Another point to add is that the closer you get to clearly infringing, the more likely you are to eat a C&D letter just to see if you're willing to spend the legal costs to try to defend that you're NOT infringing. So even if you have a reasonable argument to make in court, it may cost you money... so the closer you get, the lower your odds are of winning, and the further the IP owner is willing to pursue the case. It's not so much a red line as a black hole (heh)... the closer you get to infringing, the more likely you are to get sucked into a black hole (the court system).

The Marvel suit itself is a case in point.  In my opinion, with equally powerful lawyers on both sides, I think that was ultimately a loser for Marvel.  But Marvel was willing to go quite far to push that case and compel NCSoft to defend it or settle it.

[Joshex]

The Marvel suit itself is a case in point.  In my opinion, with equally powerful lawyers on both sides, I think that was ultimately a loser for Marvel.  But Marvel was willing to go quite far to push that case and compel NCSoft to defend it or settle it.

yeah, and marvel had more money. in NCsoft's opinion the court session would have cost them more than CoH makes in [number] years, so they settled.

[ivanhedgehog]

yeah, and marvel had more money. in NCsoft's opinion the court session would have cost them more than CoH makes in [number] years, so they settled.

It was a loser for marvel because marvel employees logged on to coh and made marvel characters.....big problems with that.

[brothermutant]

It was a loser for marvel because marvel employees logged on to coh and made marvel characters.....big problems with that.

Probably could say they were "checking" to see if it was possible to make Marvel characters.

[Joshex]

Probably could say they were "checking" to see if it was possible to make Marvel characters.

they /DID/ say that.

point is Marvel was trying to drag it out in court, NCSoft saw that and realized the cost of long court proceedings in lawyer fees and lost time to focus on company agendas.

[ivanhedgehog]

Probably could say they were "checking" to see if it was possible to make Marvel characters.

judges take a dim view of you manufacturing evidence. also, they had to agree to the eula to get to that point. which you agree that ncsoft had rights to any characters made in the game. if you make thor with the specific likeness that marvel has, does ncsoft now have perpetual rights to that likeness due to the fact that you are a marvel employee on marvel business? they settled out of court to avoid problems like that. worked for both parties. companies have taken what they claimed to be copyright violators to court only to have the cort rule their copyright invalid. it isnt a sure thing. sometime a reasonable compromise is a better choice.

[Arcana]

judges take a dim view of you manufacturing evidence. also, they had to agree to the eula to get to that point. which you agree that ncsoft had rights to any characters made in the game. if you make thor with the specific likeness that marvel has, does ncsoft now have perpetual rights to that likeness due to the fact that you are a marvel employee on marvel business?

Nope.  Just because someone works for Marvel doesn't mean they legally have the right to sign the copyright to a character away.

Marvel's legal argument was that since City of Heroes enables people to make infringing characters, its liable for contributing to any such infringement that arises.  Having their own employees make infringing characters would simply be a way to verify infringement is possible.  Either their lawyers really are that ignorant of the law (which in my experience is actually possible) or they simply didn't care what the law was and were explicitly trying to push the envelope and see how far they could get away with.

Two problems with Marvel's legal theory.  First, there's no such thing as hypothetical injury in tort.  You can't argue its likely someone somewhere is injuring you, you have to assert a real injury.  Marvel couldn't invent infringement examples, they had to find real ones.  Their own employees creations could not be actually damaging as they were created by Marvel itself.  Second, its practically bedrock established that multi-use tools cannot be held liable for contributing to copyright infringement directly.  Meaning, if something can be used to infringe on someone's copyright but it also has other legitimate non-infringing uses it can't be held to be liable simply because it was used (there would need to be other circumstances, like direct encouragement).  Because City of Heroes can obviously be used to make non-infringing characters and NCSoft never actually came out and directly encouraged people to rip off other copyrighted characters in the game**, they couldn't be held liable.  That's the precedent set by the Sony case that allowed us all to keep our VCRs.


** So far as I know; if there's an official NCSoft marketing material somewhere that tells prospective players they can make Wolverine in City of Heroes, that would be not so good for NCSoft's defense

[Vee]

I'm beginning to suspect Arcana either has an eidetic memory, has more hours in the day than the rest of us or has one of those matrix knowledge download machines. Seriously how is it possible to know so much about so many different topics?

[Inc42]

I'm beginning to suspect Arcana either has an eidetic memory, has more hours in the day than the rest of us or has one of those matrix knowledge download machines. Seriously how is it possible to know so much about so many different topics?

Because Arcana is clearly a Nemesis plot.

[ivanhedgehog]

Nope.  Just because someone works for Marvel doesn't mean they legally have the right to sign the copyright to a character away.

Marvel's legal argument was that since City of Heroes enables people to make infringing characters, its liable for contributing to any such infringement that arises.  Having their own employees make infringing characters would simply be a way to verify infringement is possible.  Either their lawyers really are that ignorant of the law (which in my experience is actually possible) or they simply didn't care what the law was and were explicitly trying to push the envelope and see how far they could get away with.

Two problems with Marvel's legal theory.  First, there's no such thing as hypothetical injury in tort.  You can't argue its likely someone somewhere is injuring you, you have to assert a real injury.  Marvel couldn't invent infringement examples, they had to find real ones.  Their own employees creations could not be actually damaging as they were created by Marvel itself.  Second, its practically bedrock established that multi-use tools cannot be held liable for contributing to copyright infringement directly.  Meaning, if something can be used to infringe on someone's copyright but it also has other legitimate non-infringing uses it can't be held to be liable simply because it was used (there would need to be other circumstances, like direct encouragement).  Because City of Heroes can obviously be used to make non-infringing characters and NCSoft never actually came out and directly encouraged people to rip off other copyrighted characters in the game**, they couldn't be held liable.  That's the precedent set by the Sony case that allowed us all to keep our VCRs.


** So far as I know; if there's an official NCSoft marketing material somewhere that tells prospective players they can make Wolverine in City of Heroes, that would be not so good for NCSoft's defense

and ncsoft did come down on infringing players with both feet. they would nuke you from orbit at the drop of a hat. that certainly helps their argument.

[ivanhedgehog]

Because Arcana is clearly a Nemesis plot.

nemesis is an Arcana plot