Resurrection of the Klaw; Now it's the killer Crocs

The IPKat's Polish friend and internet detective Tomasz Rychlicki has just informed him of a most unusual turn of events: a comic-book villain by the name of Klaw has been restored to life via a music sample downloaded on BitTorrent. This improbable event occurred in The Fantastic Four Issue #549. There's also a short article about this story on Torrentfreak which states, in relevant part:

" ... Now, in a turn of events likely to inspire further wild anti-piracy propaganda, the character Wizard from the comics has done the unthinkable. He fired up his BitTorrent client, downloaded some sound samples and used them to clone Klaw back to life. Marvel Comics discovered this nefarious BitTorrent use and has documented it in Fantastic Four Issue #549.

It’s not clear which samples he downloaded or if they were copyrighted or not but, rest assured, should the MPAA or RIAA lawyers come knocking, Klaw should be able to deal with them.

Ironically enough (again), people are obtaining the comic - you guessed it - by downloading it from BitTorrent".

Says the IPKat, caution is required before bringing fictional characters back to life. Apart from possible issues arising out of copyright infringement and passing off, the killing of a fictional character does not constitute an unequivocal surrender or intention no longer to use any associated trade marks. Merpel adds: I expect that writers of the original materials will be embedding 'terminator code' into it in order to prevent unauthorised resurrection.

Earlier IPKat post on cloning of fictional characters here


Yesterday this weblog mentioned a small spot of brand damage inflicted by a real or imagined celebrity. Today, it seems, the Crocs footwear brand is in real need of remedial treatment in the form of disaster limitation marketing.

Left: Henry wouldn't be seen wearing anything but Crocs ...

Crocs, it seems, spark vast quantities of static electricity and interfere with hospital life support machines (see news reports here, here and here). They also cause children who wear them to be caught in escalators (report here). The IPKat has three hypotheses: (i) all this adverse publicity is a complete coincidence; (ii) someone out there who wants to destabilise Crocs' stock value or market share is working pretty hard; (iii) there has been a brilliant but ill-conceived viral campaign to raise awareness of the love-it-or-hate-it footwear.