They certainly have received a lot of publicity!
When the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced in March that it won a $50 million grant to design the U.S. Army's 'soldier of the future,' the project was hailed as the stuff of science fiction and comic book heroes. MIT grudgingly acknowledged on August 28, 2002, that it copied images from the sci-fi comic book 'Radix' as part of its winning bid to host a research center that aims to make soldiers partly invisible and allow them to clear 20-foot walls in a single bound. The photo shows the similarities between the comic book's gun-toting lead character Val Fiores (R) and MIT's female warrior. (Regan Communications via Reuters)
School Admits Copying Comic Book's Soldier Image***When MIT won the grant, beating out other schools such as Cornell University, national news media used the image to illustrate the kinds of futuristic warrior gear that the institute hoped to develop. "It was an innocent use," MIT spokesman Ken Campbell said. "We didn't know it was from anyone else's artwork." The university issued a statement explaining its stance on Wednesday after an article appeared in the Boston Globe.
MIT officials have not explained how the illustration made it into their grant proposal, but Campbell said the university pulled the artwork from its Web site in April as soon as it learned of the problem. However, MIT's lawyers have argued in at least one letter to the comic book's Canadian creators that the university was within its legal right when it copied the "Radix" image and submitted it to the Pentagon. "Radix" creator Ray Lai said fans of the comic book were the first to notice the similarities between gun-toting lead character Val Fiores and MIT's female warrior. "The fans were calling our publisher saying MIT had plagiarized Val," Lai told Reuters from his home in Montreal, where he writes "Radix" with his brother Ben. "When we found out, we were shocked."***