I saw this and thought they were joking, unfortunately, they’re not. Marvel Comics and DC Comics have tried to jointly enforce trademark the term “Super Hero”.
This is ridiculous, OK, superheroes as currently recognised are largely an American creation and we can mostly thank Superman for that. But the whole genre goes back much further, to Tarzan, Dick Tracy, The Phantom and Zorro. Even in other countries, there are certainly plenty in Japanese Anime and in Britain, Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper and many other 2000AD characters come to mind.
You can find more info and commentary here on Slashdot, and here on BoingBoing.
The Tao Te Ching warns us what happens when you try to over regulate something and enforce your will through legislation. All this will do is generate bad publicity and ultimately they’ll do their own cause damage.
The Rambling Taoist says:
Well, crud! I hope this doesn’t gain legal traction. It could wreck my plans to change my blog title to “The Rambling Super Hero Taoist”.
22 March 2006, 6:18 amablokecalledbloke says:
Hehehe, nice one!
Sorry about the delay in responding, meatspace interruptis!
I have seen sillier stunts pulled by desperate companies, a lot of software patents are a good example of this. I’ve seen large fast food chains sue smaller indies because the name was similar, in software the “Lindows” (now Linspire) case is a good point.
26 March 2006, 10:45 am