Just a question: Mario, for example. Can a company, that is not Nintendo, create a character exactly like Mario and put it in a game? Of course, that would be strangely ridiculous for game industry and consumers at all, but despite that, could Nintendo do something about it legally?
You can't copyright ideas just the expression of it. So you can make games inspired by Super Mario just not use any of Nintendos characters. For example instead of italian mustachioed chibi plumber make your player character clean cut prepschool-uniformed chibi named Tim instead (but don't use my example exactly cuz it's…