A thought on Name Copyrights

I realized today as I sat and watched yet another trailer to a new movie called "Kick-***" that one of the names of a character was something I heard before.
Scratching my head I dove into my account and realized sitting on Infinity was one of my many Alternate Characters I never use anymore named Red Mist, a Katana/Super Reflexes character, part of a group I started called the Mist Ninjas. His Brother is the name of my Forum account, Dark Mist and one of my Deleted and Rerolled heroes at that and another incartnation of that character is Light Mist.
The thought finally hit me, That Character is going to get Genercised for Copy Right infirengment! So I deleted him instantly. Though dismorning I remember in my Current AE arc he is a Main Character in it. I have yet to delete him, he has been there pretty much sence the AE Started so why delete him just because so movie came out that has that characters name?

Alright finally we come to my point... Do we have ny protection, that I didn't not in the user agreement, that protects said character? I mean just think about it, if we can't use the name of a character from something else (Which I agree with, who wants 50 million Spider Bug Guys running around) then will a character who has a name that is suddenly taken by Hollywood get genersized? I'm guessing that since I could prove the character is over 2 years old and all that he wouldn't. Can anyone answer this Question, is there something I missed in the User Agreement?

I thought that NCSoft owns the rights to any characters we create, so if your toon was created before the Kickass character, NCSoft could sue them for copyright breaches, perhaps?

Eco.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

That would be funny, if I hadn't deleted the Character in my freakout about the whole thing. Though like I said he is still in my AE Arc. I don't wanna unpublish it just to make a new AV character!

Found it! Warning Long Copy and Paste Post!

(e) Character Name. In order to use the Service, you must create a character and choose a name for your character to identify your character to other Members (your "Character Name"). You may not select as your Character Name the name of another person, or a name which violates any third party's trademark right, copyright, or other proprietary right, or which may mislead other players to believe you to be an employee of NC Interactive, or which NC Interactive deems at its sole discretion to be vulgar or otherwise offensive. NC Interactive reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to (1) delete or alter any Character Name or (2) terminate any license granted herein, for any reason whatsoever, including, without limitation, any suspected or actual infringement of any trademark or trade name right, copyright, or other proprietary right.

(c) Member Content. Members can upload to and create content on our servers in various forms, such as in selections you make and characters, certain additions to the game world, and items you create for the Game(s), and in bulletin boards and similar user-to-user areas ("Member Content"). By submitting Member Content to or creating Member Content on any area of the Service, you (i) you represent and warrant that you have the necessary rights to submit such Member Content; (ii) the Member Content does not infringe the proprietary rights of any third-party, including intellectual property rights; and (iii) acknowledge and agree that such Member Content is the sole property of NC Interactive. To the extent that NC Interactive cannot claim exclusive rights in Member Content by operation of law, you hereby grant (or you warrant that the owner of such Member Content has expressly granted) to NC Interactive and its related Game Content Providers a non-exclusive, universal, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicenseable right to exercise all rights of any kind or nature associated with such Member Content, and all ancillary and subsidiary rights thereto, in any languages and media now known or not currently known. You shall indemnify and hold NC Interactive and its affiliates harmless from and against any claims by third parties that your Member Content infringes upon, violates or misappropriates any of their intellectual property or other proprietary rights.

Now I don't speak legaleze, can anyone translate to see if this covers what I am asking and maybe explain it out, cause I tried to read it and the words went all blury and I began to drool and all sorts of crazy stuff. Now my head hurts.

When did you create the character.... because Kick-***' Red Mist has been around since 2008. So unless you've had that character sitting around for over 2 years...



Also, probably not smart to point this out where anyone can see it. I'll bet your name would have been fine and gone unnoticed if you hadn't pointed it out at all.

They can't copy right character names you know that right?

NCsoft has a list of names that they disallow, to simply save time on moderation.

But to get genericed you'd need to have both the name and costume, which then becomes a copy right infringement.

Edit to clarify:

They can't copyright a name like Red Mist, because it's made of two normal real world words.

That's why 90's Grim Dark comic characters have misspelled names, because it's easier to copyright those.

Alternatively, you could be proactive and contact Paragon Studios and explain your case, that you were there first. They may take your side. Even if not, it would only be the loss of the name. No need to lose the whole character.

I'm not certain where the line is drawn, but how prominent the character with the name is does seem to factor into it. There are plenty of "common word" names that you're just not going to get away with: Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Spider-Man, Green Lantern, Iron-Man and Wolverine. In an AE arc I discovered that I could not get away with the name "Robin" even though my character had nothing to do with Batman, and even though that is a somewhat common name.

Once you get past the first, maybe second, tier of characters, though, there seems to be some wiggle room. There are actually a lot of names that are used by both Marvel and DC Comics characters. Probably the most prominent is "Captain Marvel". Others I can name off the top of my head are "Scarecrow", "Tarantula" and "Enchantress". So apparently the big boys in superhero fiction are OK with some name reuse. I would never do it intentionally, but I'm also not going to sweat someone, somewhere coming up with a character with the same name.

I am no lawyer, but I actually had occasion to submit a trademark registration back in the 90s. As I recall, a name can NOT be "Copyrighted", it can only be Trademarked. Even then, trademarks are context sensitive. So. while having a flying hero with Super Strength, Flight, Laser Eyes, and a Cold Based Breath Cone breath (if such a combination were even possible) named Superman is an obvious Trademark violation. Having an Empath named Dr. Pepper is not, UNLESS you do something which obviously implies a link between your character and the soft drink. Furthermore, if you you are using a name prior to it being registered as a trademark, you can continue to use it, provided again that you do not attempt to imply some link between yourself and the registered trademark holder.

Now keep in mind the following statements in mind...

1) As I stated, I am not a lawyer.
2) My statements are based on my memory of my own experience in the early 90s. My memory may be faulty, the law may have changed in the last 20 years, or both.
3) Even if my memory is correct, and the laws are unchanged, NC Soft has sole discretion on what names are acceptable and what names are not. Their servers. Their responsibility. Their call. They are more likely to err on the side of caution.

As fate would have it, at one time I had one of my own characters generic named using a name which IS in fact Trademarked, but which *I* am the trademark holder of. However, in the context of a superhero/supervillain environment, I can see how it is definitely in the grey area, so I get it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frosty_Femme I said "ur" which is not a word. It's a sound dumb people make when you ask them to spell out "you are".

Yeah Red Mist over two years and I probally over reacted by deleting him. And no I'm not going to bug NCSoft support about replacing him, he was low lvl and barely through the teens, so It wasnt a big thing with how easy a scrapper is to lvl. But he is still alive and well in my AE Arc.
I didn't point him out the way most people think, if you look up Dark Mist Ninja (My Forum name) You will never find me online on CoH because my forum name now differs from my Global Handle (There is a reason for that) but I can tell you after this thread was made my character Dark Mist Ninja got a few tells on how he is an infringment upon the Copyright which annoyed me since he is coming into the limelight of this post and has nothing to do with the Red Mist character.

Truth be told, if it came down to it and a Dev or Red Name came up and said "You have to remove Red Mist from you AE mission" I would do it. I'm not as much worried about the character since he was so low lvl'd. It just popped into my head that this Happened and could happen to other names and what is our protection against it (They head it in Copyright information but I do know names are Trademarked)
I've litrally been playing a few of my Characters since Villains came out and I knew that it was a matter of time with the names I used someone somewhere would use them, and I'm sure if it was someone like Marvel or DC Comics who used the name and enough people pushed the issue someone with a two year old name would get Generic eventually to stop the complaining.

But it seems the running answer from you guys means I shoulda tested it out a little and seen what happened with the character once he got used a little more.

Dark Mist Ninja infringes on someone?

Here's my persepctive:

If in the future you make a character and Hollywood later comes out with a similar character, you have legal but not actual protection.

NC Soft has the right to use (and therefore let you use on your account) any character created with their tools, so long as the character did not exist prior to it being entered into their database.

So if your Red Mist is first, theoretically Lion's Gate could not win a lawsuit to get NC Soft to force you to delete the character, even if the two were by coinidence identical, down to the biography.

However, that's not how it wil work in real life.

Because of the prominence of the movie, people are going to be specifically looking for Red Mist (and Hit Girl, and Big Daddy, etc) clones for a while. Characters named Red Mist are more likely to be reported now than they were a year ago.

Whatever NC Soft employee your character is reported to may have seen this thread (or heard of any PM you may have sent regarding this), but if not, they are not going to take the time to research your character and do the legwork to verify that it preexisted Mark Millar's earliest verified drawing/writeup of Red Mist. They are just going to generic the character and send you an email saying "Send us 3 alternative names for this character different from the old one."

They are not going to take the chance on even a failed lawsuit from Lion's Gate, nor should they.

Dude... you're seriously making a mountain out of an anthill.

Just play however you want, and if the Devs have a problem with it, they will LET YOU KNOW.

Just play, have fun, use whatever names you want that aren't obviously infringing. If you do end up infringing, you just get a rename token to try again.

Chill dude, it's not that big a deal, it's not like you're doing this stuff maliciously and on purpose.

No I know, I'm just wonder where our rights start and end in this, the User Agreement isn't that specific, but I guess I am gunna get as good of an answer as I am gunna get. And if I was gunna make a mountain out of an Anthill I would go off about problem with another characters name, but its an issue of another matter interely (Not infringement or rights)

That portion in the EULA is simply lawyer speak for NCSoft to cover its *** in two different ways. The first way is to protect them from outside interests (e.g., Marvel, or I suppose it's Disney now). The second is to protect them from you so you can't go after them for "using" your character in some way, directly or indirectly, hence why even if you were J.K. Rowling, you still couldn't use any of the Harry Potter characters (and even if they didn't use one of the example characters, the EULA basically says that you're transferring ownership...which makes things excessively complicated).

As for whether or not they actually "own" your character... Well, as I've said before, judges are too scared to set precedent on that matter. This is for a few reasons but there are two big ones. For one, it's a sticky situation to determine who owns what when it's a virtual creation by someone who is not a contracted worker which is physically stored on another's server which might be (or might not be) owned by the company in question, who then may be owned by (or contractually obligated to) another. And the other far more dire concern, is that any decision regarding the situation would directly determine the functional legal power of the EULA, which can, at best, be described as "hazy".

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That all said, it's best just to not worry about it and deal with it IF it comes up.