Screwed by the Lawyers: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

* The spectacular legal pileup on both sides of the Pacific Ocean between multiple rightsholders in the ''[[Super Dimension Fortress Macross]]'' franchise has ensured that precious little of the franchise [[No Export for You|can ever be released in the United States]]:

** Bandai was going to release the video game ''Macross VFX II'' in the US—even released a demo disc with one of the major game magazines. Harmony Gold forced them to stop.

** As a side effect, the cancellation of ''Lupin VIII'' was the direct result of the creation of ''[[Inspector Gadget]]'', when [[DiC]] was told to come up with a replacement.

 

* In the late 1990s, Black Mermaid Productions of Australia were responsible for ''[[Elf Quest]]: Wavedancers'', which featured a group of aquatic elves. "Creative differences" between Black Mermaid and EQ publisher Warp Graphics led to the cancellation of the series, and an agreement that neither company would reprint it. Warp came out with its own ''Wavedancers'' series featuring new characters, while Black Mermaid is reportedly working on something called ''Elf Fin''.

* ''[[Zenith]]'' cannot be reprinted because [[Grant Morrison]] claims that when Rebellion bought the rights to ''[[2000 AD]]'' from IPC, it apparently didn't include the rights to ''Zenith''. The fans are disappointed.

* Morrison's ''[[Doom Patrol]]'' was kept out of reprints until the 2000s because of a trademark dispute with the Charles Atlas bodybuilding company over the character Flex Mentallo, who began as a parody of Atlas's iconic comic strip advertisements.

* Another well-known 80s superhero comic that has been caught in a rights-ownership dispute for decades is the [[Alan Moore]]/ [[Neil Gaiman]] ''Marvelman'' (''[[Miracleman]]'' [[Market-Based Title|in America]]) - Rebellion, IPC, [[Neil Gaiman]], [[Alan Moore]] and [[Todd McFarlane]] ''all'' claim to own the series, which dooms any chance of it ever being revived. Marvel has apparently cleared the rights for the earliest stories featuring the character, but not for its run in Warrior magazine or [[Eclipse Comics]]. Said run, featuring the work of Moore and Gaiman, is naturally of the most interest to comic readers and is left as a particularly sad example of [[Keep Circulating the Tapes]].

 

* Sometimes this happens to [[Fan Sequel]]s and [[Fan Remake]]s based on licensed properties, the most famous case probably being ''[[Crimson Echoes|Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes]]''. Of course, this should have been obvious from the start.

** ''Chrono Trigger Resurrection'' met the same fate.

* A Youtube user by the name of [http://www.youtube.com/user/DisneyNAW DisneyNAW] spent nearly an entire year working on a fan-film called ''The Grand Adventure'' which was pretty much a [[Mega Crossover]] of everything Disney starring Mickey, Donald and Goofy as they try to take down Chernabog. Halfway through the editing, he got a letter from Disney telling him not to post it online. Not for copyright law or anything, though that could be considered a major factor, but because of how certain characters are portrayed. First was Mickey, who was portrayed as mischievous. While they thought he perfectly captured his character, they wanted to bring Mickey's mischievous character their own way. And the second was Chernabog being portrayed as an [[Expy]] of [[The Devil]], which collides with another reason why they C&D'd it: It felt a little too dark and edgy to them. Despite these reasons, they enjoyed watching the movie and gave DisneyNAW compliments on making the film.

 

* The indie [[Slasher Movie]] ''[[All the Boys Love Mandy Lane]]'' probably won't see the light of day in the United States for the foreseeable future, due to the company that held the American distribution rights to it going bankrupt and closing its doors. Also a case of [[Screwed by the Network|Screwed By The Studio]]—the [[Weinstein Company]] dumped the film on the now-bankrupt distributor once they saw a number of horror films (most notably ''[[Grindhouse]]'') go bust at the box office, despite having already paid $3 million for the rights to it.

* Many people believe ''[[The Day the Clown Cried]]'' was never released due to poor taste but it was actually due to copyright issues over the script. In fact, Jerry Lewis was technically not supposed to finish it but he did, resulting in the movie being completed but rarely seen.

* ''Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story'' was a [[Dead Baby Comedy|sardonic]] biopic by [[Todd Haynes]] about [[The Carpenters|Karen Carpenter's]] rise and bulimia-related death, with the additional gimmick that the Carpenters were represented by [[Barbie]] dolls. Due to the angry lawsuits from Karen Carpenter's estate and Mattel, the movie will probably never be screened legally again.

** In a very oddball case, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch existed in ''both'' the MCU and in Fox's ''X-Men'' franchise, thanks to some complicated legal wrangling. However, the ''X-Men'' versions couldn't mention the Avengers, and the MCU versions couldn't mention mutants. However, in March 2019, Disney bought Fox (with Fox's eager cooperation) -- including ''all'' the Marvel properties. The X-Men and Deadpool are now part of the MCU -- and the MCU versions of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch are now the "official" ones. And as of 2021, the Fantastic Four have also returned to Marvel (thanks to a failed attempt at a reboot a few years earlier), and are promised to appear as part of the MCU's Phase 4.

** Ultimately, it appears the MCU will be affected by this trope less and less as time goes on and licenses expire or end for other reasons.

 

* ''[[The Charmings]]'' got complaints by the [[Walt Disney]] Company when ABC was run by Capital Cities, since it was an unauthorized parody of ''[[Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Disney film)|Snow White]]''. It's unclear whether this or low ratings ultimately led to its cancellation, however, but Disney does now own ABC, opening up the possibility of a DVD release, though the heavy discouragement of press comparisons with the later ''[[Once Upon a Time]]'' by the network suggests that it considers it a [[Dork Age]] program.

** Disney doesn't own "[[Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs (novel)|Snow White]]", but it owns the dwarfs' names. So, if you plan on doing Snow White for something, [[Writing Around Trademarks|make your own dwarfs...]]

* The DVD release of WB's all-female superhero series ''Birds of Prey'' was held up for ''years'' (leading to an awful lot of [[Keep Circulating the Tapes]] needless to say) due to music rights issues; the fact that it was [[Screwed by the Network]] (cancelled in its first season despite good reviews and decent ratings, reportedly due to internal network politics) did not help. It was only after years of pleading from the fans that the series got a full release on DVD... with a note on the packaging, you may notice, that "some" of the music has been changed for home video release.

 

* Redd Kross bassist Steven Shane McDonald added a bass track to the entirety of the [[White Stripes]]' 2001 album ''White Blood Cells'', then put MP3s of the whole project (entitled ''Redd Blood Cells'') online. Later on, after some kind of "arrangement," only the first track remains online.

 

* The phrase "this video has been removed due to a copyright claim from *insert name of company here*" has become a well known sight on [[YouTube]], even with [[Team Four Star]], who put a disclaimer at the beginning of every episode they post. The Warner Music Group has also been responsible for taking away music from videos, saying that it's violating copyright.

** Certain videos have managed to avoid this fate by claiming Fair Use.

* Some flashes on [[Newgrounds]] are victims of this due to being based on copyrighted works, as Newgrounds has received [https://web.archive.org/web/20131030164410/http://www.newgrounds.com/lit/legal.html cease-and-detest letters] from companies such as [[The BBC]] (for a ''[[Teletubbies]]'' spoof called "Teletubby Fun Land", which has been eventually renamed to "Tele''bubby'' Fun Land"), [[Jim Henson|The Jim Henson Company]], and [[MGM]] (for a ''[[RoboCop]]'' flash tribute made by a fan).

 

* ''[[Garfield]]'' had a short run of ''Believe it, or don't'' gags... until PAWS Inc. got a cease-and-desist letter from the [[Ripley's Believe It or Not!|Robert Ripley]] estate.

 

* Way back when, FASA had obtained a license to use a number of mecha from three anime shows -- ''[[Crusher Joe]]'', ''[[Fang of the Sun Dougram]]'' and -- yep, you guessed it -- ''[[Super Dimension Fortress Macross]]'' for use in their ''BattleDroids'' wargame. Never heard of ''Battledroids''? That's because [[George Lucas]] threatened a lawsuit over the word "Droid". So, the game became ''[[BattleTech]]''. Then, in 1994, [[Robotech|Harmony Gold]] complained and threatened a lawsuit over use of the ''Macross'' mecha in the game. The problem was that FASA had rights to the miniatures that originally came with the game, which were based on the aforementioned designs. But because of the way they were licensed, FASA did not necessarily have rights to the ''artwork'', which Harmony Gold took them to task over. The battlemechs based on those designs continued to be used (The Warhammer and Marauder are some of the most famous 3025-era battlemechs), but not depicted in images, being dubbed the "Unseen".

** A year or so ago, Catalyst Game Labs (the game's current publisher) gained the rights to use the artwork for much of the Unseen... except for Macross based designs, which Harmony Gold still retains control over.

* The owners of the ''[[Legend of the Five Rings]]'' card game were forced to change the art on the card backs...because, apparently, it was too similar to the design of the Olympic rings. At least, according to the International Olympic Committee. (For a [[Trading Card Game]], changing the card backs is pretty much a death sentence for the value of any cards made pre-change.)

* An popular game from Cheapass Games was "Before I Kill You, Mister Bond". (The premise was that villains don't just shoot the captured agent because he's worth more points if he's taunted a few times first.) It was pulled off the market after a cease-and-desist from MGM, and reissued as "Before I Kill You, Mister ''Spy''". MGM didn't like that one either. Cheapass later re-released the game as "James Ernest's Totally Renamed Spy Game", and so far seems to have not garnered any attention from MGM again.

 

* The ''Bratz'' doll line was stopped in its tracks by a 2005 court case that found that the concept was created while its creator was still at Mattel, before making a comeback in 2010, although by that time, their popularity had waned (plus, the new dolls are a bit more conservative). This also had a more permanent knock-on effect for the [[Animated Series]].

* ''[[Bionicle]]'' was prevented from using certain character names due to threats of legal action from Maori activists, since many of the names were taken from the Maori language. Lego managed to avoid getting completely screwed/sued by altering the spelling of the names.

** It wasn't so much the usage that was the problem, more that Lego wanted to ''copyright'' ancient cultural terms.

 

* The [[Tetris]] Company absolutely ''adores'' this trope. They claim to have [[Disney Owns This Trope|copyrights on basically every aspect of the game]], even those which the US Supreme Court has ruled ''cannot be copyrighted'' ([[wikipedia:Lotus v. Borland|Lotus v. Borland]]), and they'll send C&D letters to anyone who so much as dares make a game with falling tetrominoes, or even just the song "Korobeiniki" (which is actually a Russian folk song long in the public domain, but often remembered as "the Tetris theme").

** ''Blockles'' was pulled after a lawsuit from The Tetris Company was settled out of court and replaced with a ''[[Puyo Puyo]]'' clone.

* The mission "Hollywood and Vain" in the ''Yuri's Revenge'' expansion pack for ''[[Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2]]'' featured parodies of iconic Hollywood action heroes, namely "[[Arnold Schwarzenegger|Arnnie Frankenfurter]]", "[[Sylvester Stallone|Sammy Stallion]]" and "[[Clint Eastwood|Flint Westwood]]", as controllable infantry units complete with (campy) voice impressions of the respective actors. While EA and/or Westwood could have easily cited Fair Use per ''Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc.'' which set precedent for commercial parodies of existing works or people, they instead played it safe and disabled the actors' voices in patch 1.001, replacing them instead with a generic GI voice set. Patching the game to [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTgtrOdMe40 restore] the excised voices is trivial though.

* Ditto with ''[[The Revenge of Shinobi]]'', which has seen [https://tcrf.net/The_Revenge_of_Shinobi_(Genesis) five revisions] due to copyright concerns (as Japan at the time had somewhat lax copyright laws). Like ''Yuri's Revenge'' above, ''Shinobi'' had cameos from a number of pop culture icons, namely Rambo, the Terminator, Spider-Man and Godzilla, as well as that of actor Sonny Chiba. Spider-Man was made official in REV02 when Sega obtained the video game rights to the superhero franchise, though Spidey had to be recoloured to a pink spandex in the Virtual Console release.

 

 

* [[Channel 101]] had to cancel ''House of Cosbys'' because of a cease and desist from [[Bill Cosby]]'s attorney.

* ''Moshi Monsters'' had to take down its character Lady Goo Goo and her music video "The Moshi Dance" and scrap the next planned music video "Peppy-razzi" after Lady Gaga's lawyers won a law suit against them claiming people would get confused and think the character was endorsed by her.

 

* Disney's purchase of [[Marvel Comics]] put an end to Sony's production of ''[[The Spectacular Spider-Man]]''. (In general, Disney's trying to avoid screwing with existing licensing deals, but Sony gave up the TV rights to Spidey so they could keep [[Spider-Man (film)|the movie rights]].)

** [[Greg Weisman]] explained the show's situation [http://www.s8.org/gargoyles/askgreg/search.php?qid=14223 here]; he even points out that the companies themselves weren't to blame, but that it was just bad corporate luck.

* The rights to ''[[Transformers: Robots in Disguise]]'' were sold to Disney as part of a [[Saban Entertainment]] package deal,<ref>Disney wanted to buy the rights to ''[[Digimon]]'', but couldn't buy it separately. The only way they could get their hands on it was to buy ''all'' of Saban's shows as a package. This would be the same deal that landed them ''[[Power Rangers]]'' for a while, which [[They Just Didn't Care]] about enough to properly supervise the creative team for.</ref> thus making it unlikely to ever see DVD release, since Disney couldn't care less about ''[[Transformers]]'' to rerelease it and Saban couldn't care less about ''Transformers'' to buy the show's rights back from Disney as they did with much of their live-action input.

* Music rights were the reason behind the long wait for ''[[Daria]]'' on DVD; being a MTV produced show, they ([[Network Decay|ironically]]) used snippets of new music constantly, often using ten or more just one episode. Even just lasting seconds long, it led to a mind-boggling amount of rights to shuffle through. Eventually, they decided it was either clear all the rights, and pricing ''Daria'' out of the market altogether, or re-produce music that sounds good enough to pass for whatever mood they were going for.

 

== Other ==