Our own Luke Plunkett brought us the pics of this awesome custom painted Marcus Fenix Munny doll created by Emilio Lopez for his cousin. Later, we get word that Emilio had received a cease and desist letter from Epic Games citing various copyright infringements.

Hearing of Emilio's plight, the guys over at Gamespy's Planet Gears of War site immediately sent off an email to Epic Games' Mark Rein about the situation. Rein sent back a reply with the a bit about what happened and an apology to Emilio.

Ugh. Our lawyers are trying to do their job and protect our trademarks but I guess they didn't realize this wasn't a commercial project and they fired off a standard form letter. It is unfortunate when this happens but the problem with trademarks is you HAVE to protect them and Emilio's work looks so amazingly professional, right down to a cool package!, that they probably failed to notice this was a one-off gift for non-commercial use. What we need to do is come up with some sort of permission letter for things like these so that we're properly protecting our future commercial rights but not stopping people from doing cool fan art like this.

On behalf of Epic I apologize to Emilio and anyone who was offended by this.

Pretty damn classy if you ask me. Flynn De Marco

Mark Rein on Gears Munny Case [Planet Gears Of War]

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