An interesting article on Gamasutra details how
Nintendo is warning a company called Webzen that it's forthcoming MMO might violate a Zelda trademark.Officials from Nintendo have raised concerns through its Korean distributor Daiwon C.I. that characters in forthcoming Webzen-published South Korean PC online game Wiki may violate trademarks from its GameCube title The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker.
Often noted for its diligence in protecting its copyrights, a Nintendo spokesman claimed the company was taking 'natural steps' in protecting its intellectual rights and would 'seek appropriate measures at the appropriate time.' According to South Korean Nintendo spokesman Jeong Hyuk-jin, this is the first time that the company has addressed copyright issues related to a competitor's game design in Korea.
Unveiled as part of Webzen's recent product announcements, which also included news of a major Unreal Engine 3 MMO and a new MMO title from Grand Theft Auto creator David Jones, Wiki clearly does share a very similar artistic design to Wind Waker. However, despite this, a spokesperson from developer Webzen claims that the hero of the game does not have any fixed image, and is created by the player to be their avatar in the game world.
"The number of variables [for hairstyles, clothes and facial features] are in the tens of thousands," said Webzen's spokesperson Choi Hyun-woo in an interview with Korean newspaper JoongAng Daily, also commenting: "We are still in the middle of developing the game, which will begin closed testing services in December."
This seems eerily similar to Marvel's lawsuit against Cryptic. It seems a certain key issue really needs to be decided by (sigh) the legal system: Are MMO developers legally liable if players use character creation tools to "violate" trademarks of other properties? If so, how far should a developer go to prevent or inhibit this sort of thing?
I hate all this legal crap. I just want to play cool games, and if I can make an avatar that looks like someone else's creative work I hardly see how that hampers profit from that work. If I played Webzen's MMO, I wouldn't stop buying Zelda games (which I love).
What I find most sad is that the normal mechanism of punishing a corporate entity doesn't seem to work here. In other markets, some form of public outcry often happens to change things. But with games, people just keep playing them. And, they buy them from companies like EA and (sadly) Nintendo without regard to their business practices.
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