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Screwed by the Lawyers: Difference between revisions
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Fans may have to [[Keep Circulating the Tapes]] if legal troubles also forbid a home release.
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]] refers to this as the [[wikipedia:Tragedy of the anticommons|tragedy of the anticommons]], where the existence of competing rights holders -- not just in copyright, but also in patent law, land ownership, leasing rights and other areas -- frustrates achieving a socially desirable outcome.
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** Numerous attempts to bring out the widely praised Yamato's ''Macross'' transformable toys have met with C&D letters. Yamato even tried to release the toys with all Macross indicia removed, under the name of "Sunwards". It failed.
** The only reason, apparently, that ''[[Macross Plus]]'' and ''Macross II'' were released and still enjoy widespread release in the US is that they came out at a time in which HG was "not minding the store", according to rumors that they were weakened after a head-hunting raid by [[Saban Entertainment|Haim Saban]]. And that the Japanese side of the pileup [[Sending Stuff to Save the Show|was actually listening to the fans and the rest of the industry]].
** It's still a minor miracle that the original series attained a US release, first through AnimEigo and then through ADV.
** The big one, though, is ''[[The Movie|Macross: Do You Remember Love]]''. This is considered one of the holy grails of old-school anime fandom. However, numerous companies -- the usual names in the conflict, such as Big West, Studio Nue, [[Tatsunoko Production]] and Harmony Gold, as well as other companies -- Shogakukan, Japan Victor Musical Industries, and even ''[[Godzilla]]'' studio Toho are all squabbling, making a veritable legal [[Gambit Pileup]], one so intractable that some names in the anime industry think we'll see a cure for cancer and world peace before DYRL is legally released again outside Japan.
*** Unlike ''7'', ''Zero'', and ''Frontier'', though, ''DYRL'' was released on VHS in the US and the UK during the mid-1990s. The US got a heavily-cut version titled ''Clash of the Bionoids'' (released by Celebrity Home Entertainment), and also a version with fewer cuts or no cuts titled ''Superdimensional Fortress Macross'' (released by Best Film and Video), both of which had an English dub commissioned by Toho, which was similar to [[Hong Kong Dub|the dubs for Toho's Godzilla movies]]. In the UK, Kiseki Films released a version with the dub and a subtitled version<ref>this is the version which has the infamous mistranslated line "My engine blocks are angry at me"</ref>, both uncut.
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* The ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'' fan-film ''[[Damnatus]]'' originally had Games Workshop's full support, but during post production, problems with intellectual property rights arose due to differences between British and German copyright law. Thus, the movie was banned from official release. However, someone leaked the movie and can be seen. Thus, it was the ''lawyers'' that got screwed.
** ''[[Turn Signals on a Land Raider]]'', a ''Warhammer 40K'' webcomic, stopped because it was becoming too time-consuming and expensive to do. The reason the lawyers got involved is that the only way to really give it a chance to make enough money to continue was to make it into a book. But Games Workshop refused to grant permission. Despite that refusal being of questionable legality (it probably would be legal under fair use or parody), it wouldn't be worth the hassle if the guy got sued.
* 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.
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* 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.
* The [[Marvel Cinematic Universe]] is a big victim of this, being a [[The Verse|shared universe]] for a handful of cinematic characters adapted from a [[Marvel Universe|shared universe]] for literally ''hundreds'' of comic book characters. [[Thor]], [[Iron Man]], [[The Incredible Hulk]], [[Captain America (comics)]], [[Hawkeye]], [[Black Widow]] and [[Nick Fury]] can freely interact with each other in the movies just like they do in the comics, but [[Spider-Man]], [[Daredevil]], the [[X-Men]], and the [[Fantastic Four]] continue to exist in their own stand-alone universes because their movie rights are owned by various competitors of Marvel Studios. As awesome as it would be, it's unlikely that we'll ever see an ''[[The Avengers (film)|Avengers]]''-style crossover featuring Spider-Man or the X-Men, even though these are very common in the comics.
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** ''[[Freaks and Geeks]]'' actually kept the original music for the DVD, paying all the necessary fees. This is why said DVD costs several times as much as DVDs for other shows.
* The DVD releases of ''[[The Muppet Show]]'' have been repeatedly delayed due to issues with music rights. One entire scene had to be cut from a first season espisode because the studio was unable to secure the rights to a song used in that scene. Completely averted by Jim Henson's other major production, ''[[Fraggle Rock]]'', as it used entirely original music.
* 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.
== Music ==
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** Luckily, Doug Walker successfully defended the videos as Fair Use.
** Ironically, when the ''[[The Room]]'' review was pulled, it was possible to find it uploaded by other people... on [[YouTube]].
* [[One Manga]].com has removed its archived scanlations because of attitude shifts from some publishers.
** In fact, quite a number of online scanlation sites have been shut down or censored due to publisher pressure.
* Like many radio show hosts, Phil Hendrie allows website subscribers to download show episodes as podcasts. At some point, network lawyers decided that it was a copyright violation for podcasts to include music. This affected any skits that involved music, including his frequent parodies of Jim Rome's and [[Coast to Coast AM|Art Bell]]'s shows that incorporated their respective "[[Guns N' Roses|Welcome to the Jungle]]" and "[[ABBA|Dancing Queen]]" theme songs, and his [[Running Gag]] of using the "Darth Vader Death March" as theme music for his fictional boss. The music in these cases was replaced by awkward silence, and if characters in Phil's comedy skits commented on the music, podcast listeners could not know what they were talking about.
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== Other ==
* Some years ago a British food company produced a brand of chips [fries] called Stringfellows, which had to be withdrawn when nightclub owner Peter Stringfellow objected to the name.
* [[McDonald's|McDonald's Corp.]] tried to force a Scottish fine dining establishment named McDonald's to close or change its name despite the latter being in business for over a century. The fast food chain lost the case. It helped that the Scottish restaurant was run by a high member of Clan McDonald.
** McDonald's Corp. also attempted this in Malaysia, except that the dining establishment in question was a small Indian-Muslim restaurant whose only offense is that its name vaguely resembled McDonald's. The fast food chain lost that case, too.
** One of the cases they did win was to convince a San Francisco coffeeshop to change its name from McCoffee, whose name was a [[Incredibly Lame Pun|pun]] on the name of the owner Elizabeth McCaughey, a good ''decade'' before they got into the coffee business themselves. These and many other examples can be found at [[The Other Wiki]].
*** The reason that it's not particularly common to see parodies that use fast-food chains named "Mc-anything", or real-life businesses named "Mc-Anything", is because McDonald's has been so aggressive and successful at suing anybody who tries to, even when the business in question has nothing to do with food. Wal-Mart has taken on this role of late, going after all the "-Mart"s of the world.
*** Many of these cases are in actual fact not because McDonald's or Wal-Mart are trying to be deliberate [[Jerkass|jerkasses]], but because American trademark law demands that ''every'' infringement the IP holder is aware of MUST be defended against or they can be ruled to have abandoned the trademark when a major infringement case appears (such as the one directly below). This is why Xerox and Coca-Cola have been very careful to wage campaigns against using their product names as generics.
** At least once famous case of McDonald's being [[Tropes Are Not Bad|clearly in the right]] was the early 1990's, was when they sued a South African businessman who was opening hundreds of fake McDonald's restaurants, complete with Big Macs.
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* ''[[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|the]] ''[[Earthbound|MOTHER]]'' [[Mother 3|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-Out|ShoutOuts]], [[The Jimmy Hart Version|Jimmy Hart versions]] and a certain [[Salvador Dali]] themed enemy to be changed for another international release, and Nintendo is unwilling to override his decisions. The rest of the world may not be the only ones affected by this - notably, it's still absent from the Japanese [[Wii|Virtual Console]] even though it was included as a Masterpiece in the Japanese version of ''[[Super Smash Bros Brawl]]'' and [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3UWSm5dKIw explicitly named by Satoru Iwata] when introducing the Virtual Console in 2005...
* 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.
** And yet, with the sheer volume of ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog|Sonic]]'' hacks and fangames freely available all over the place, that franchise has averted the deadly gaze of Sega's lawyers and this trope... so far.
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** [[Mike Judge]] wouldn't let a third of the series be released since he was [[Old Shame|embarrassed by it]].
* Some lawsuits by the members of the class depicted in ''Mrs. Munger's Class'' (whose likenesses were used without permission) ended the segment's run on [[One Saturday Morning]] and shut the door on plans for an ABC primetime version of the cartoon.
* ''[[King of the Hill]]'''s third DVD set was released a whole ''year'' after the second, and rumor has it that the delay was related to licensing issues for the music, explaining the third to sixth season box sets' lack of bonus features.
* The US release of ''[[The Tick (animation)]]'' animated series is missing one episode each in the two seasons released so far; due to a prominent minor character bearing a [[Expy|strong similarity]] to a well-known celebrity, and Buena Vista not wanting to spend the money to secure the likeness rights. Buena Vista still hasn't released the third season; for reasons unknown. The UK region 2 release by Lace International has all three seasons complete and uncut.
* 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 snipets 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.
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