I wonder if they could get away with something like that. Wolverine actually would be perfect for it.
Reveal that his "real past" is a lie, to give him a new civilian name, reveal that he's an inhuman, and give him a new code name. Bum!, you have a Wolverine, who should still be recognizable just by his fairly generic claws, who wouldn't actually break any Wolverine copyrights. Better yet, introduce this resurrected Wolverine as a "mysterious masked Warrior completely unrelated to the X-Men" in an Avengers book, and only reveal his X-Men ties later, after the "new" character is already established as not being a part of the X-Men franchise.