Musings from Brian J. Noggle: All the News I Can Imagine (I)

All the News I Can Imagine (I)

Marvel sues two sleepers over dreams

LOS ANGELES — Marvel Enterprises is suing two individuals who've slept because it claims that the individuals had dreams with Marvel characters "Spiderman," "Rogue," "ShadowCat," "She-Hulk," "Dazzler," "The Scarlet Witch," and other heroes and, quite frankly, a lot of heroines.

The lawsuit claims that St. Louis resident Sean Wilson and Cahokia, Illinois, resident Sam Jose violated Marvel's trademark characters in their dreams on the nights of May 4, 2005 and May 6, 2005 respectively. Marvel seeks unspecified damages and an injunction against the two young men to stop using its characters.

REM-sleep enables participants to emulate superheroes' look and abilities and then battle against other dream characters in a virtual city. Like similar so-called personal entertainment media, dream offer a myriad of combinations so that no two dreamers' plots are exactly the same.

But in its lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court, Marvel argues that the dreamers' imaginations easily allows them to portray themselves as its superheroes, including "Cyclops" of the X-Men in that one scenario involving "Dr. Jean Grey" of which the Comics Board would not approve.

The New York-based company also took issue with the ability of dreamers to go so far as to use the names of Marvel comic book characters in their dreams.

Marvel claims the two men are responsible because the the dreams occur in their minds, raising the question of whether a person is responsible for his or subsconscious behavior even while unconscious.

Marvel also claims the men have disrupted its "existing and future" business prospects for licensing its characters in stories similar to the plots of their dreams, as the men might not buy those comic books that pale in comparison to their own nocturnal experience.

Neither of the defendants in the lawsuit would comment.

The Marvel lawsuit appears to be the first to raise this question in the scope of individual dreams. But early copyright infringement lawsuits brought by recording companies against people who hummed tunes successfully argued the hummers were responsible for license fees owed to the music publishers because they performed the songs, often in public venues.

The argument can still be made that the dreams are only empower dreamers to the same degree that an establishment like Kinko's enables customers to make paper copies of copyrighted material, said Lou von Fredericks, senior intellectual property attorney with the Nighttime Frontier Foundation.

"Is it a violation of copyright to make up a character in the dream world or is that fair use?" von Fredericks said. "This is really untested ground in the courts."

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:30 PM