Questions about copyrights; Colonial Marines Thread

I had a question for the more seasoned and experienced of you regarding copyrights. We all know the power Fox/'Century Fox/Fox Interactive has over their entitled asseted copyrights. The one specific copyright I have a question about is the Alien franchise.

I know about the control Fox has over the image of the Alien entity, but what what my question regards is the Colonial Marine in the Aliens film. Is it illegal to use the image and name of the 'United States Colonial Marine' in any mod or other material that we make?

I suggest you try and find a way of contacting Fox and send them a letter regarding the copyrights of the material.
Also, you may want to have a look at this article, writen by modDB staff member jacksonj04. It reviews the legalities of modding.
Moddb.com
Good Luck!

LOL, don't wish me luck. I'm asking for a friend of mine, who also is getting into modding. It's good that both of us are modding together, because we can collaborate and share tips and such. It's good, that if one of us doesn't know how to go about doing something we can just ask the other.

He's got an idea in mind involving the Colonial Marines. I won't give too much away, but I promised I would help him with the legalities and also with the design document since he helped me with quite a bit of concept art for my Terminator mod.

It appears that jacksonj04's tutorial didn't really cover if it's based on a single character/entity. It only covered the films themselves in general. Thanks for the link anyway, it helped cover a lot of other things.

- Edited By Frosty_theaussie On Mon 15th, Dec 2003 @ 4:40:49am

Anybody else have a take on this? My friend has come up with some interesting ideas, such as giving the player some down time between missions sort of like Elite Force to interact with other members of their squad. That was actually the interesting idea, the interesting idea was giving the player a nice gallery of decals to decorate their armor with.
YES! Decorate your armor. Because in the ass-end of space, military rules hold no worth.

well, seeing as troopers got away with it after coming to an agreement with lucasarts, you should be fine, as long as you a: send them an actual letter, rather than email, and b: act proffessionally about it.

i dont know what fox are like though, so you might get denied straight off, if that happens, tough luck really

Fox are tough to crack
Heck, Fox News sued The Simpsons (also owned by Fox) because of very slight references - so be warned, they may strike again!

My friend, Michael, AKA Slayer, sent my a rather lengthy e-mail earlier today describing what he'd like to see in it. I'd say he's got some pretty good concepts down pat, although a few tread some pretty new ground that has never been covered before. I'm unsure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, as it is fresh and unique. Many new mods being developed now are Team versus Team multiplayer games. Michael's idea is that it will be Single-player, based on the Colonial Marines from the Aliens movies.

Now we probably all know the Marines and the United States Colonial Marine Corps. They've gathered a pretty large following, featuring in the Aliens versus Predator games as well as having a book based upon the events and technology used by them (the Colonial Marines Technical Manual). To put it simply, Michael's idea is an algamation of several game dynamics into a singular core. These games are:

Star Wars - Jedi Academy: The personalisation and mission-based gameplay of it is a key feature of the main idea. Whereas Jedi Academy has the player customize their light saber and force powers, this Marine concept has the player customize their armor and weaponary just like in the Aliens film and chose from a selection of skills (a not very large selection though, as to not turn away the common FPS gamer).

Star Trek - Elite Force: The space-based NPC squad combat element and dynamics feature ala Elite Force with the player serving in a USCM platoon for a tour of duty.

IMO, his ideas are turning out pretty nicely, and are all unique.