well things got complex.

[MaidMercury]

This. If anyone had cause to sue, it was DC. Flight, super strength, laser eyes, impervious to everything but plot devices, personality of a cinder block. Really, all they missed was the big S on his chest.

Statesman was unique. Marcus Cole was dying from mustard gas sickness, WWI vet, who drank from the 'Well of Furies' and got his powers from Zeus. (and cure)
Sort of magic....Not Captain America, definitely not Superman, perhaps 'Captain Marvel' is about the closest in comparison.

[dwturducken]

Statesman was unique. Marcus Cole was dying from mustard gas sickness, WWI vet, who drank from the 'Well of Furies' and got his powers from Zeus. (and cure)
Sort of magic....Not Captain America, definitely not Superman, perhaps 'Captain Marvel' is about the closest in comparison.

And, Captain Marvel (or his publisher, Fawcett Comics) survived a legal challenge from National Comics (now DC) because of the character's similarity to Superman. It's a funny little world.

[Thunder Glove]

Statesman is basically Superman's powerset with a bit of Captain Marvel's origin.  He's hardly the only character in CoH you could make such a comparison with.

Back Alley Brawler is basically Luke Cage meets Wildcat, Manticore is Batman's personality and crimefighting style with Green Arrow's main gimmick, Positron is almost completely Iron Man, Synapse is Flash (with additional electric powers), there's a lot of Vision in Citadel, and Captain America is more closely represented by the meme-tastic Blue Steel.

[Pinnacle Blue]

...Manticore is Batman's personality, bank account, and crimefighting style with Green Arrow's main gimmick...

Fixed that for ya. 

[saipaman]

All things being equal, I doubt you could win a lawsuit based on power sets alone.

[PSI-on]

Well to be fair, it's so hard to be 100% original these days. Hell many stories today are very close or based on Shakespeare, and yet his works were sometimes based on either history or OTHER stories including greek stories, just as an example. Nothing wrong with being similar or close to as long as an effort is made to be as original or different as possible, CoX dev and creative team did a good job doing that for themselves. Statesman being a good example as he brought up feelings or images of other famous characters, but had a rich back story for his world, costume, and such that made him stand out as something special. At least that's how I see it. Also....Blue Steel has meme's?

Statesman is basically Superman's powerset with a bit of Captain Marvel's origin.  He's hardly the only character in CoH you could make such a comparison with.

Back Alley Brawler is basically Luke Cage meets Wildcat, Manticore is Batman's personality and crimefighting style with Green Arrow's main gimmick, Positron is almost completely Iron Man, Synapse is Flash (with additional electric powers), there's a lot of Vision in Citadel, and Captain America is more closely represented by the meme-tastic Blue Steel.

[Blondeshell]

Also....Blue Steel has meme's?

Yup.

[Triplash]

Also....Blue Steel has meme's?

Blue Steel once punched a guy so hard, the shockwave rippled backward through time and inspired someone to invent the internet so one day there could be a meme about it.

[Heroette]

If anything, the last few posts were worth having this thread.  Very entertaining.

[MaidMercury]

now things are rEaLLy complex....

[Joshex]

[Ironwolf]

You are making the assumption that after all those years - Marvel shut the game down?

Based on what Voodoo?

[Thunder Glove]

From what I can see, it's all based on the fact that, when he asked NCSoft for the address to Marvel's legal department, they gave it to him.  Therefore NCSoft is subtly pointing the blame at Marvel for CoH's shutdown.  Therefore it's all Marvel's fault.  Therefore an unrelated third party can sue Marvel and get the game back.

... or that's what I'm understanding here.

[Joshex]

You are making the assumption that after all those years - Marvel shut the game down?

Based on what Voodoo?

corporate lawyer voodoo mixed with NCSoft deciding to not spend the money to actually defend CoH in court. yeah, they know good and well that they could have easily defended CoH against Marvel's allegations but marvel knew that they could drag out the court process and cost NCSoft millions more than the game would be worth in the process, so NCSoft took a settlement.

at least thats the cause and effect I would think could lead to a shut down.

what kind of case would stretch on so long that NCSoft would get tired of it? the kind where marvel brings up one accusation in each hearing as evidence that CoH infringes on it's character IPs. a never ending onslaught of "that character looks alot like hulk, and we saw some players with a wolvarine look-a-like.

baseless unprovable accusations, but also non-disprovable. or at least thats how NCSoft's legal department advised them, tht the case would go on for years costing them millions more than the game makes on average. A never ending hearing.

thats why NCSoft wont fight back and why if we want to fight back we need to plan carefully, we need to find out what the base of all thier accusations are and attempt to prove that such concepts that they note are not individually owned by thier company alone but are used by countless characters from all sorts of series. once that is brought to the courts attention your should call that an 'article' and give it a number, that way if Marvel tries to say something different like "stateman's star and coloring is too similar to captain america's shield" you can say "objection, article 5, stars and stripes are the symbol of america and multiple other nations and states the concept of them cannot be owned by any one company in specific."

I have been informed that I am missing something big in my whole 'ncsoft was shut down' thread, so I'll incorporate it when I hear it.

[Arcana]

we live in a world where anyone can go to court with anyone over anything. you can even take the president of the US of A to court for having inappropriate relations with your pet duck through an account called 'sexyjazzguylovesquakers' on 'sexyyoungduckcams.com'

even if the case is completely hear-say and rediculous, well.. I havn't heard of many cases being thrown out recently, only a few. fact is most cases stand even if you are suing someone for someone else without thier prior consent.

As a matter of fact, standing is the primary reason I've seen ludicrous lawsuits tossed out.  For example, you mention the President of the United States of America.  Lawsuits challenging his legal right to be President have been dismissed due to the technicality of lack of standing of the person making the challenge, because they either were not a registered voter in the district the lawsuit was filed or failed to assert they actually voted in the election in question, both of which would be required for standing.  In another very high profile example, the Supreme Court rejected the challenge made against California's Proposition 8 on the grounds that private citizens have no legal standing to defend state statutes against constitutionality challenges when the state itself chooses not to defend them.

It might seem silly to sue McDonalds over making you fat, but such a suit asserts actual damages by the petitioner and thus demonstrates legal standing to pursue legal action.  You could sue NCSoft for depriving you of enjoying City of Heroes (and you'd lose) but you cannot defend NCSoft against legal action in their place.  NCSoft can't even delegate that right to you even if they wanted to: in some recent high(er) profile patent trolling cases it was ruled that the patent troll lacked legal standing to pursue the case because they did not actually own the patents in question, they were just given "the go ahead to sue" in the owner's place.  Which you cannot legally do (similar recent cases involved copyright law, which would be applicable to the legal rights asserted by Marvel in their original complaint).

The only way I could see you could manufacture standing would be to sue Marvel directly for taking action against NCSoft that deprived you of the game.  And I believe that's already legally settled as not working: if it did all the customers of a company could sue creditors of the company that forced it into bankruptcy. 

All of this is completely separate from the fact that unless Marvel filed an actual cease and desist letter, NCSoft shutting down the game because they thought Marvel *might* do so means there's no way to file legal action against Marvel to prevent them from actually doing so.  Legally, US courts tend to follow the "case or controversy" rule that requires an actual questionable act or situation that can be ruled on.  All federal courts and nearly all state courts are forbidden from making so-called "advisory" opinions that rule on hypotheticals or adjudicate preemptively.  In other words, you can't go to court to prevent someone from taking an action they haven't actually taken, except in the specific case of filing for a legal injunction.  And those require legal hurdles that cannot be satisfied in this case without litigating the very case you'd be incapable of litigating due to standing.

[thunderforce]

Like right now, have there been a single blip of indication that either side is actually moving or NCSOFT is even interested in selling?

Obviously NC is interested in selling if the price is sufficient. They're a publicly traded company; they'll sell you the entire company if you've got enough cash.

Although some crazy ideas did work. "I got fat, I don't feel like working. Say, I'll sue MCDonalds."

That (assuming it happened; most of these crazy lawsuit stories simply didn't happen (Winnebago cruise control) or are significantly more complicated than they appear (boiling-hot coffee)) is obviously less crazy than Joshex's idea. The person who got fat had some actual relationship to the lawsuit.

I do feel this persistent comparison you make with TFHM is utterly absurd. Hail Mary might have been overly optimistic (but I think not; a long shot is still worth taking if it's your best shot) but it's not even in the same ballpark as this sort of fantasy scenario; it was clearly something which had a non-zero chance of success. This is up there with asking the fairies at the bottom of the garden if they own the rights to CoX.

[JaguarX]

Obviously NC is interested in selling if the price is sufficient. They're a publicly traded company; they'll sell you the entire company if you've got enough cash.

That (assuming it happened; most of these crazy lawsuit stories simply didn't happen (Winnebago cruise control) or are significantly more complicated than they appear (boiling-hot coffee)) is obviously less crazy than Joshex's idea. The person who got fat had some actual relationship to the lawsuit.

I do feel this persistent comparison you make with TFHM is utterly absurd. Hail Mary might have been overly optimistic (but I think not; a long shot is still worth taking if it's your best shot) but it's not even in the same ballpark as this sort of fantasy scenario; it was clearly something which had a non-zero chance of success. This is up there with asking the fairies at the bottom of the garden if they own the rights to CoX.

Possibly. A lot of TFHM was fantasy as if some out of the blue some major corporation is going to receive some heart felt letter and automatically come to the rescue buy the IP and release it to the public for the warm fuzzy feeling and good of this community. Yeah, it was just as fantasy based as this idea. Both are overly optimistic both ignore the realities of the situation and both make pretty strange assumptions that in TFHM case that their contact had direct access to the decision maker and the company was actually as  whole from someone who actually could speak on behalf of the company, had interest in buying and or didn't already know about the closing and didn't read a single bit fo news about it already.

[doc7924]

Obviously NC is interested in selling if the price is sufficient. They're a publicly traded company; they'll sell you the entire company if you've got enough cash.

That (assuming it happened; most of these crazy lawsuit stories simply didn't happen (Winnebago cruise control) or are significantly more complicated than they appear (boiling-hot coffee)) is obviously less crazy than Joshex's idea. The person who got fat had some actual relationship to the lawsuit.

I do feel this persistent comparison you make with TFHM is utterly absurd. Hail Mary might have been overly optimistic (but I think not; a long shot is still worth taking if it's your best shot) but it's not even in the same ballpark as this sort of fantasy scenario; it was clearly something which had a non-zero chance of success. This is up there with asking the fairies at the bottom of the garden if they own the rights to CoX.

Lets not forget this case that happened here in NYC - a drunk man fell into the train tracks -then later sued NYC and the Transit Authority for $4 million because there was no one to stop him falling into the tracks - and he won the case.

So people will sue for anything hoping they will win - even if it's their own fault.

[JaguarX]

Lets not forget this case that happened here in NYC - a drunk man fell into the train tracks -then later sued NYC and the Transit Authority for $4 million because there was no one to stop him falling into the tracks - and he won the case.

So people will sue for anything hoping they will win - even if it's their own fault.

yeah.

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

Lets not forget this case that happened here in NYC - a drunk man fell into the train tracks -then later sued NYC and the Transit Authority for $4 million because there was no one to stop him falling into the tracks - and he won the case.

So people will sue for anything hoping they will win - even if it's their own fault.

Yes, but without sufficient standing the suit gets tossed out without ever getting close to a trial. (Luckily physical injury guarantees standing if nothing else.) You can file suit for anything if you have the time and/or money, but that doesn't mean it gets anywhere at all. If you do it enough times you can be barred from bringing suit yourself at all. At that point you have to convince a lawyer to do it for you and if you have a history as a vexatious litigant a lawyer who wants to remain in good standing with the courts will definitely have second thoughts before taking your case.
Luckily (or unluckily depending on how you look at it) the US legal system is divided into a variety of different court systems, most of which aren't bound by precedents set in the other courts, so you can try suing in multiple venues as long as you can come up with the most superficial justification for why that particular court would have jurisdiction. Of course it will probably still get tossed out in the first hearing, but it does mean that even the most worthless and insane lawsuits can be used to waste legal resources and irritate judges and lawyers for years on end.

So if you want to be annoying for years on end without the slightest chance of accomplishing anything useful frivolous, insane lawsuits are the way to go.