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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pielorinho" data-source="post: 1113655" data-attributes="member: 259">Actually, I think these are great examples of the weakest part of the suit.  Vampires entering torpor was certainly an Anne Rice trope long before it was a White Wolf trope, as was the relationship between sire and child (I'm assuming the spelling of "child" is immaterial in the movie, so I'll use conventional, rather than WW, spelling).  If such things are anyone's IP, they'd be Anne Rice's; WW's use of them without giving Rice royalties is implicit acknowledgement that such tropes are NOT IP. As for the two groups in Underworld -- this is very weak.  Does underworld include as well the violent revolutionary punk vampires (the brujah)?  What about the wizard vampires (the tremere)?  Or the incredibly ugly sewer-dwelling Nosferatu, or the bestial Gangrel, or the insane Malkavians?  They bring up the Assamites in the lawsuit, but where are the Tzimisce, the Ahrimane, the Lasombra, the (forget the name) Gypsy-vampires?  The serpentine Settites? Surely there are only so many stereotypes of different Western vampires, and White Wolf has, as a sensible gaming company, come up with clans allowing players to take on just about any stereotype, from the ugly monstrous vamps to the beautiful effete vamps.  If the movie Underworld were to differentiate their vampires from one another in any way at all, they were bound to run into one or another of the stereotypes that White Wolf also mined. And let's look again at the werewolves.  The heart of the WW Werewolf game is a battle against encroaching civilization.  While there are urban werewolves in WW's setting, they generally fall into one of two groups:  homeless people, and computer geeks.  "Street thugs" is most certainly not a WW werewolf stereotype; while there are occasional Get of Fenris street thugs (implied, I believe), they're definitely an exception to the general image. Again, White Wolf has a huge variety of stereotypes all over their materials.  As well they should:  they've published literally dozens of books on the mythos, and they've tried to draw out every existing vampire stereotype somewhere or antoehr.  For that reason, whatever choices Underworld made when describing their werewolves and vampires, they were bound to run into ideas that WW had incorporated. The lawsuit mentions that Underworld vampires reflect in mirrors, as do WW vampires.  But what if Underworld vampires didn't reflect in mirrors?  Why, neither do LaSombra vampires in White Wolf!  Look at the blatant plagiarism! You see what I'm saying?  By virtue of entering this genre (modern goth-punk vampires), whichever way they turn, they'll be running into images White Wolf has worked with.  That doesn't mean they're borrowing from WW, much less illegally copying from them. Daniel</blockquote>

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