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Posted
by
CmdrTaco
from the legal-web-slinging dept.
An anonymous reader writes "It now looks like Marvel has a dispute with
Sony over Spiderman. This short
report tells how Sony is trying to take over Spiderman. First we saw the
dispute between Marvel and Stan Lee, and now this."
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I see Marvel has a point with the merchandising, that they are supposed to do most of it with the joint agreement. I'm not sure how Sony is violating Marvel's rights on the Spiderman franchise because as far as I can tell, they're making movies.
This is a really horrible report, so Google News comes to the rescue and I found a fanboy site with a lot more information. [superherohype.com]
Hope it helps, because the Drudge report was just confusing.
... when Spiderman wasn't a corporate trademark to be argued over, but just a cool comic book that I'd pick up and read. So nice to have the corporate legal eagles shit all over it.
Your take on the Nintendo/Sony thing is wrong. Nintendo made a deal to let Sony develop the "PlayStation" CD addon for the SNES. Then they dropped them for Phillips. Then they dropped Phillips after Sony threatened to release their own SNES compatible CD playing "PlayStation". Then Nintendo gave up altogether, after watching TG16 and Sega CD fail miserably. Then Sony took the project and made it into Playstation X, which we all know and love (PSX).
Or something like that.
Anyways, dont get to riled up over a Drudge report story. The guy has a habit of taking minor day-to-day corporate memos and blowing them up into the "scoop of the century".
I believe this quote is referring to Sony Pictures, the movie producing subsidiary of Sony. It is quite possible that the only profits Sony Pictures made last year were from Spiderman, so the economic impact of a loss of license would be huge.
From reading the article, I glean that Sony is advertising Spidey in such a way as to not include Marvel in any way.
"Spiderman" by Sony Entertainment. No mention of Marvel anywhere. At least, that is what I get from "MARVEL is accusing SONY of doing everything it can to disassociate SPIDERMAN and MARVEL in the minds of retailers."
I think sony was abusing the license for movie spiderman. Prime example is the game "Spiderman the move" [activision.com], Notice how there is no mention of marvel. Sony got the royalities since it was "based" on the movie. Also blockbuster used spiderman to advertise their products and same goes with bestbuy with spiderman in their commerical. These royalities were paid to sony not marvel.
Ironically enough, Marvel already has this... the super-hero's name is DareDevil. Lawyer at day, avenging super-hero at night. The "twist" is the character is blind, supposedly from an accident in his childhood, but I don't buy that. He really went blind from an internship at a law firm on hire by Microsoft. Reading all that legal mumbo-jumbo and helping Microsoft prevail against the Department of Justice would make anybody blind.
How is Sony more evil than Microsoft? At least when Sony tries to corner a market all to themselves, their product is quality. No rational person will argue that VHS was actually superior to Beta. Are Microsoft operating systems quality? Wait, I don't think I have to wait for an answer to that since we are all on Slashdot. Was IE superior to Netscape prior to the infamous bundling? Nope. As for Sony slapping Nintendo around, Nintendo deserved it. Nintendo was a monopolist that stole Atari's intellectual property and tried to lock every company up making third party software, which Atari never did when it was the monopoly power in the videogame industry. But with all that said, the Playstation2 is inferior to the Xbox... Granted, the game that gets the most play on my Xbox is "Gauntlet Legends" but I'm pretty old school in my videogame passions... Hence my screenname, err, handle...:)
Actually, after a quick search to verify facts, it's quite clear that Sony Pictures would have made a sizable profit even without Spiderman last year. This article [csmonitor.com] shows Sony with two other movies in the top ten from last year. So, I don't think there's any doubt the story is a bunch of bull.
This doesn't sound right as much of the video game involved characters not in the movie. (Although perhaps licensed) If they did do what you say though then clearly Marvel has a point.
On the other hand Harry Knowles says this is nothing. (Not that his track record is that great, mind you) Ain't It Cool News [aint-it-cool-news.com]
I'm confused... (Score:5, Informative)
This is a really horrible report, so Google News comes to the rescue and I found a fanboy site with a lot more information. [superherohype.com]
Hope it helps, because the Drudge report was just confusing.
I remember the day... (Score:5, Informative)
Today must be a really slow news day (Score:1, Informative)
What is this? Yellow journalism day?
more info (Score:2, Informative)
Re:About what I would expect from Sony (Score:2, Informative)
Or something like that.
Anyways, dont get to riled up over a Drudge report story. The guy has a habit of taking minor day-to-day corporate memos and blowing them up into the "scoop of the century".
Knowles Knows (Score:5, Informative)
more careful reading (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I'm confused... (Score:5, Informative)
"Spiderman" by Sony Entertainment. No mention of Marvel anywhere. At least, that is what I get from "MARVEL is accusing SONY of doing everything it can to disassociate SPIDERMAN and MARVEL in the minds of retailers."
Re:I'm confused... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Marvel's next superhero (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Dance with the devil... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:more careful reading (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'm confused... (Score:3, Informative)
On the other hand Harry Knowles says this is nothing. (Not that his track record is that great, mind you) Ain't It Cool News [aint-it-cool-news.com]