JohnMayo wrote:
Heroic Publishing is still publishing a Champions title.
Clearly I'm a little confused about the ownership of the Champions property. There is a comic book title from Heroic Publishing, a role playing game from Hero Games and an online multiplayer computer game from Cryptic Studios. Presumably whoever Marvel negotiated with actually had the comic book rights to the trademark.
Unfortunately from the article it didn't sound like the details were likely to be forthcoming from anyone. But this is really an issue just of trademarks, not the
Champions property more broadly. If no one else was publishing a comic/magazine with the title
Champions the fact that Hero Games or Cryptic Studios have desktop or computer games with the same name would be largely irrelevant. Unless someone was trying to publish a comic based on the content of those games, but in that circumstance copyright would be the stronger case than any trademark concern. Their trademarks are limited to their industries.
Since Marvel is clearly not planning on publishing a
Champions comic book based on either of the games, it'd be hard to see either gaming company being able to stop the use of the word
Champions for the name of a comic/magazine. Just like neither they or Marvel could stop someone from publishing a series of novels about Roman gladiators with the name/title
Champions. The exact same term(s) can be used in many different industries as trademarks; heck even within the same industry if we are talking about local-sized companies in different states since they technically aren't in the same marketplaces. I'm sure there are hundreds of
Champion(s) trademarks registered at the USPTO. The only one which would be relevant here would be the one related to comic book publishing. (Perhaps expanded to magazines/periodicals more broadly, but I'm betting you could publishing a sports magazine called
Champions and likely not run into a trademark problem.)
Like you, I assume Heroic still has the legal trademark, as they were the ones who were able to show that Marvel had abandoned it back in the 80s. Certainly Marvel knows who holds/held the trademark, as that is the party which forced them to use
The Order as a title the last time they wanted to use
Champions. Most likely Marvel negotiated something with them so that Marvel could use the title again. Technically a title doesn't have to be considered a trademark at all - it just typically is something that is done to prevent others from using your title, or a similar one, and creating confusion in the marketplace. And there is no neutral third party enforcers/protectors of trademarks - a trademark holder has to do the work themselves to protect their trademark. You can lose a trademark by not preventing others from using it, but if Heroic has a deal in place with Marvel, they can still show that they have defended their trademark by requiring Marvel to make that deal. That makes it difficult for anyone else attempting to publish a third comic titled
Champions and say that it can't be protected by trademarked since there are two of them on the stands. And if there is an agreement between Heroic and Marvel, it could also include other stipulations intended to limit the likelihood of confusion in marketplace. (Or perhaps Heroic is fine with some confusion, hoping someone picks up their
Champions book thinking it is a variant cover. Confusion in the favor of the legal trademark holder often isn't considered a problem by said trademark holder.)
But that is just one possible explanation; perhaps the simplest but not necessarily the true one. For all we know, someone at Marvel/Disney could have said that the title/trademark
Champions is worth millions to them and to go ahead regardless, planning to bury Heroic in litigation over whether or not Heroic has a valid trademark if necessary. I find that highly unlikely, since if someone thought that it'd probably be cheaper to just buy the trademark at the outset, but unless someone with the internal knowledge says what actually happened, it isn't something likely to be able to determine from the outside.