Marvel Enterprises, creator of Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk
and The X-Men, is suing the developer and publisher behind City of
Heroes, an on-line multiplayer game in which subscribers create
their own superhero characters, according to the Associated
Press.
The game, was developed by California-based Cryptic Studios Inc,
and published in April this year by South Korean firm NCsoft
Corp.
Set in the aftermath of an alien invasion in a virtual world
known as Paragon City, villains and mutants battle users in the
guise of superheroes – guises that they design themselves from a
huge array of features, costumes, characteristics and skills.
According to the Associated Press, Marvel Enterprises is
concerned that this design feature allows subscribers to copy its
comic book characters, thus infringing its trade marks, and
potentially affecting its ability to licence the characters into
other video games.
It has therefore sued, seeking damages and an injunction, on the
grounds that the characters, while developed by subscribers to the
game, are created on servers run by both NCSoft and Cryptic
Studios.
