Soon I Will Be Invincible

[ffutures]

Loved this book to bits, a really good riff on the superhero / supervillain theme. But as an RPG fan the fact that

• The main superhero group is called The Champions
• The "comic book covers" at the end of the book are labelled The Champions and have some generic similarity to supplements for the Champions RPG and the comic that was based on the game

surprised me a little. I was expecting to see some sort of credit there, and there's nothing. Anyone know if there has been any sort of deal cut on this, or legal action in the works?

Comments

[vitruvian23.livejournal.com]

There's also the issue that there's a big difference between having a group called the Champions somewhere in your story, and having that as the title of your product. There's usually only a trademark issue if something is used as part of the 'trade dress' of a product, and copyright doesn't extend to such generic concepts.

So, since Hero Comics (an offshoot of the people that produced the game) got a trademark on the Champions name for comics, and Marvel never kept the trademark from their 70s series, Marvel just now had to rename a new comic from The Champions to The Order.

However, when a similar situation came up before with the Captain Marvel name, DC was still able to revive the old Fawcett Captain Marvel character, they just had to name the comic book itself Shazam.

I think the Champions in the book (which I liked very much) are distinct enough from any other team of the same name that it's not an issue, especially considering that they don't feature prominently in the title or other trade dress.