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Screwed by the Lawyers: Difference between revisions
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It might be important to note that in some of these cases (particularly ones where big corporation X is suing over similarities in name or style), the company is doing it because they are compelled to -- United States trademark law generally demands that anything that even hints at IP infringement has to be defended against by the holder. If they knowingly decline to fight an infringement, a court later on could rule in a IP case that they willingly abandoned the trademark. This has happened with Aspirin (once a Bayer trademark<ref>Although [[World War I]] helped put a nail in that coffin</ref>), Cellophane, and other "genericized" trademarks. It's also why most productions bend over backwards to make sure that [[Real Life]] product names are not mentioned at all (unless as [[Product Placement]]), and certainly ''never'' as generics.
[[Wikipedia|The Other Wiki]] refers to this as the [
Related to [[Screwed By the Network]].
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** Jim Mallon explained that the reason he didn't want Rhino producing ''The Film Crew'', was they'd be spending money on b-movies for The Film Crew, when they could be using whatever money they had for b-movies shown on [[MST3K]] ([[MST3K]] only secured temporary rights to their movies while the show was on the air, and the rights have to be re-negotiated for DVDs. It's not easy, or cheap).
** ''[[Rifftrax]]'' itself is essentially immune to this trope due to a variation of style, however: they don't release the movies in any form, they merely release tracks of the cast talking ''about'' the movies; obviously the original copyright holders don't have any claim over things people choose to say about their films. (There ''are'' some movies available as pre-synced tracks, but they cost more, part of which goes to a payment to license them.)
* Licensing and rights issues have prevented the home video release of many TV series over the years. Most notable examples include ''[[The Six Million Dollar Man]]'' and the original ''[[The Bionic Woman]]'', which were withheld from North American VHS or DVD video release for close to 30 ''years'' before a breakthrough was reached that will allow their release starting in late 2010. The 1960's ''[[Batman (TV)|Batman]]'' series reportedly has such complex licensing that the general assumption is that it will simply never be legally released in a home video format until it finally enters public domain near the end of the 21st century. The 1996 ''[[
* When future generations turn to DVD/digital recordings of today's TV series, many of these shows will be lost in their original versions due to music and sometimes entire scenes being changed due to licensing and clearance issues. Examples include: the theme song for ''[[Married With Children]]'' being replaced on the DVD releases; a scene involving [[The Beatles (Music)|The Beatles]] being deleted from the VHS release of the ''[[
** The deletion of the clip from The Chase is particularly egregious, as that clip is the only surviving portion of The Beatles performance at Albert Hall (which was wiped from BBC archives for the same reason a lot of early Doctor Who was as well) and survived only because it was incorporated into the episode. These deletions fit the trope as well, because it was done in large part because the contracts with the actors' union in the period prohibited broadcasting any television program more than twice (and the entirely incorrect view of the BBC management that black and white programming was unsellable overseas).
** Most of MTV's shows have been severely affected by this due to an agreement with record companies for free promotional use of their songs on the channel. Because of this pop songs are used in show soundtracks, but the rights would need to be purchased for video release. Shows like [[Daria]] and [[The State]] languished for years before [[The Jimmy Hart Version]] of the songs could replace the offending tracks.
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== Videogames ==
* ''[[Holy Invasion of Privacy Badman]]'' was forcibly renamed to ''[[What Did I Do to Deserve This My Lord]]?'' after an angry letter from [[Batman|Warner Bros.]]
* The [[Tetris (Video Game)|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'' ([
** ''Blockles'' was pulled after a lawsuit from The [[Tetris (Video Game)|Tetris]] Company was settled out of court.
* ''[[In the Groove]]'' stopped development after a lawsuit from ''[[Dance Dance Revolution]]'' publisher Konami was settled out of court. Similar lawsuits on ''[[Guitar Hero]]'' (at this point owned by Activation) and ''[[Rock Band]]'' were less successful.
* This trope is commonly theorised to be the reason that [[MOTHER 1 (Video Game)|the]] ''[[Earthbound (Video Game)|MOTHER]]'' [[Mother 3 (Video Game)|trilogy]] has remained a case of [[No Export for You]] ever since the series' [[Earthbound|sole American release]] in 1995. Japan has looser copyright laws than America, and it's believed that Shigesato Itoi refuses to allow the myriad cultural [[Shout
* The fangame ''[[Streets of Rage]] Remake'' was yanked off of its' website days after completion due to Sega wanting to protect their IP, despite the fact that Sega themselves haven't made any more games in the series for over 10 years. Some theorized that it was because of the recent mobile phone port of Streets of Rage 2.
** This came not only after the project had been in development for eight years, but also after Sega had (supposedly) given their blessing for the project as long as it was not sold for profit. Regardless, [[Keep Circulating the Tapes|the finished game still proliferates on file-sharing websites]], although any hope of a patch to fix bugs and unresolved issues with the game is probably kaput.
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[[Category:Creativity Leash]]
[[Category:Screwed By The Lawyers]]
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