The Game Show Forum
The Game Show Forum => The Big Board => Topic started by: TLEberle on January 02, 2014, 04:07:33 PM
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How does it work that some other show can do a game show segment (Calorie Card Sharks on The Chew, Password on Fallon, and so on) and not run afoul of any intellectual property issues? Or are they on the wrong side of the issue anyway and the rights-holder doesn't care?
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Perhaps they are getting permission first. When Jimmy Kimmel hosted "Modern Family Feud," it looked like the game software came directly from the production company.
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If it is classified under parody, would it be filed under fair-use (not entirely sure on the law in that area)?
If they do pay, maybe the cost is worth it since no version of Password and Card Sharks is currently on the air.
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It's definitely fair use. The Chew is not looking to make its living off of Calorie Card Sharks and The Food Pyramid.
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It's definitely fair use. The Chew is not looking to make its living off of Calorie Card Sharks and The Food Pyramid.
You say 'definitely' yet here we all are wondering.
They're using the intellectual property of others, an action which has laws associated with it. What percentage of profits are garnered from it is immaterial.
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It's definitely fair use. The Chew is not looking to make its living off of Calorie Card Sharks and The Food Pyramid.
You say 'definitely' yet here we all are wondering.
They're using the intellectual property of others, an action which has laws associated with it. What percentage of profits are garnered from it is immaterial.
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include—
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
(emphasis added)
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It seems to me that Food Card Sharks or even the more faithful recreations on Jimmy Fallon would be covered as "fair use" under the same general guidelines that allow Weird Al to have a career. Further, I would think that Fremantle's lawyers have better things to do with their time.
I definitely think we shouldn't be throwing around the word "definitely". (See what I did there?)
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The other issue to look at is whether it helps or harms the brand. Years ago, after the movie Muppet Treasure Island was released, Hormel filed a lawsuit over a character in the film named Spam. The judge threw out the lawsuit, basically saying "The film mentioned your brand name repeatedly for 90 minutes. They gave you a free commercial."
From a legal standpoint, that might come into play here. I would especially argue that "Password" has become a more valuable property for Fremantle in the past few years because of Jimmy Fallon.
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Further, I would think that Fremantle's lawyers have better things to do with their time.
They really don't. I know from experience.
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To add my two cents here, what exactly would Fremantle stand to gain by issuing C&D orders to Jimmy Fallon for his Password segments (to name one example)?
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To add my two cents here, what exactly would Fremantle stand to gain by issuing C&D orders to Jimmy Fallon for his Password segments (to name one example)?
Cory, you wanna tackle this one?
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"All of the Intellectual Property is the property of Fremantle, which has not authorized these uses on the Website or on any other websites. Fremantle considers that the reproduction, sale, licensing, distribution and exploitation of the Game, constitutes a flagrant infringement of Fremantle's intellectual property rights, causing loss and damage to Fremantle. The distribution of the Game also implies a relationship or support from Fremantle and dilutes our intellectual property rights and may interfere with Fremantle licensing relationships.
Although we appreciate your enthusiasm for Press Your Luck, the unauthorized use of the Intellectual Property is an infringement of the copyrights and trademarks of Fremantle. The remedies for these infringements include, inter alia, preliminary and permanent injunctive relief, actual or statutory “in lieu” damages, the recovery of all profits and an award of attorney’s fees and costs incurred in protecting its copyrights. The remedies for trademark infringement and dilution include injunctive relief, treble damages, treble profits and an award of attorney’s fees."
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So basically they're saying you're cutting into their profits with your game? I don't see how that could be an issue, if you're not getting any financial gain from it yourself...
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So basically they're saying you're cutting into their profits with your game? I don't see how that could be an issue, if you're not getting any financial gain from it yourself...
Cutting into profits is one of many things they said in the nasty letter. Still, the nasty letter is just the way Fremantle gets started. They might be right about all those things, or they might not. That would ultimately be for a judge to decide, if Cory wanted to spend untold thousands of dollars to fight them.
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So basically they're saying you're cutting into their profits with your game? I don't see how that could be an issue, if you're not getting any financial gain from it yourself...
Because if his game is better than whatever thing they're shilling on the Wii or DS, then people are going to play it for free instead of paying $30-$40 for their game. That's a no-no.
BigJon's Price is Right is far and away better, customization and details wise, than anything Fremantle has released in the last five years. I know that I wasn't interested in buying a Price game (until Decades) when I could play his game.
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So basically they're saying you're cutting into their profits with your game? I don't see how that could be an issue, if you're not getting any financial gain from it yourself...
Then by all means, lawyer up and fight them. Let us know how that works out for you financially.
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BigJon's Price is Right is far and away better, customization and details wise, than anything Fremantle has released in the last five years.
<cough>
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It seems to me that Food Card Sharks or even the more faithful recreations on Jimmy Fallon would be covered as "fair use" under the same general guidelines that allow Weird Al to have a career.
Weird Al gets permission from the original artists/songwriters and licenses his content (Coolio-related misunderstandings aside) -- at least for his officially released material -- so he may not actually be the best example to cite when looking at a potential "fair use" situation.
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Do you think Fremantle is aware they own Second Chance? Or don't they own it?
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BigJon's Price is Right is far and away better, customization and details wise, than anything Fremantle has released in the last five years.
<cough>
To be fair, he did qualify and limit his statement. Noone's going to deny that BJ's stuff is buggy.
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To be fair, he did qualify and limit his statement. Noone's going to deny that BJ's stuff is buggy.
Where I come from, bugs are a detail.
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This is the letter me that and Christopher received last year...
"We are counsel for Hasbro, Inc. (“Hasbro”), the owner of the copyrights and trademarks in the United States and Canada for the famous SCRABBLE® crossword game. Hasbro recently became aware of your online crossword game called “Scrabble Sprint Challenge”.
Your unauthorized “Scrabble Sprint Challenge” game infringes Hasbro’s copyrights in violation of 17 U.S.C. 501, and also violates the federal trademark laws, including 15 U.S.C. §§ 1114(1) and 1125(a) and (c), by creating a likelihood of confusion with respect to Hasbro’s authorization, sponsorship of or association with your commercial activities.
We therefore demand that you immediately remove the “Scrabble Sprint Challenge” game from your website and provide Hasbro with written assurance that you will not make any further unauthorized use of the SCRABBLE property.
Please remove the game and confirm to me within ten (10) days your agreement to the above. This letter does not purport to be a complete statement of the facts or the law and is without prejudice to Hasbro’s legal and equitable rights."
We know we didn't have the rights to do these replica games, but at the time it was the chance that we had to take. It was a way to get recognition and attention to show what each of us were capable of doing. Even though it wasn't kosher, it paid off in spades. It scored each of us work in the industry.
-Dan
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Forgive what might sound like a stupid question: Hasbro has rights to the TV show from twenty years ago? I thought some dummy corporation scooped that in the 80s.
(If you had called the game "Sprint Challenge," changed up some of the graphics, sounds and such, could you have successfully defended your game?)
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(If you had called the game "Sprint Challenge," changed up some of the graphics, sounds and such, could you have successfully defended your game?)
Certainly. Could they afford to, though?
People seem to be missing that part: the issue is not whether the Little Guy is in the right, because our legal system is such that Big Business can be bullies and there really isn't anything we can do about it. The issue is not getting noticed by the bully in the first place. Once you are on their radar, that's it, regardless of whether you are legally in the clear or not.
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(If you had called the game "Sprint Challenge," changed up some of the graphics, sounds and such, could you have successfully defended your game?)
As always, the problem with the hypotheticals is that we don't know. Maybe if their game never had the word Scrabble in it, Hasbro would never have found out about it and never written the letter. But say all that was true and Hasbro sent them a letter anyway? Do they really want to fight the big giant company because they may be marginally, just-on-the-edge right?
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In general, I think there's a lot more vigorous defense of trademarks and other intellectual property now than there had been in the past. "Everything" can now be "monetized" so "everything" needs to be "protected."
A non-GS example: The Union Pacific Railroad started painting the heralds of its predecessor lines on a few freight cars, so that they could say that the trademark was still in use and therefore remained their intellectual property. This prevented just anyone from using, say, the Missouri Pacific Railroad trademark on a model train, or a calendar, coffee mug, whatever. There was a huge flap over this with respect to licensing demands and eventually UP backed down at least in terms of model train royalties, but there's still a licensing agreement that has to be signed. UP isn't so nice with other items like calendars and T-shirts, as far as I know.
Getting back to GS, I can't imagine that Fallon et al wouldn't have approached Fremantle to get permission to do "Password." And they do a nice job as well. If it had been a one time "parody" then I could see them asking for forgiveness later.
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It seems to me that Food Card Sharks or even the more faithful recreations on Jimmy Fallon would be covered as "fair use" under the same general guidelines that allow Weird Al to have a career.
Weird Al gets permission from the original artists/songwriters and licenses his content (Coolio-related misunderstandings aside) -- at least for his officially released material -- so he may not actually be the best example to cite when looking at a potential "fair use" situation.
Weird Al has also said that he is under no obligation to do that, because he does it as a courtesy.
IIRC, as long as he gives credit to the people who wrote the song he is parodying, it's okay.
Besides that, I don't see even if he does give credit, it's an issue- radio stations do parodies all the time.
/Ludia's original TPIR game was better than BigJon's
//So was the 2010 update
///they really dropped the ball with the TPIR decades release
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Forgive what might sound like a stupid question: Hasbro has rights to the TV show from twenty years ago? I thought some dummy corporation scooped that in the 80s.
(If you had called the game "Sprint Challenge," changed up some of the graphics, sounds and such, could you have successfully defended your game?)
So there's a game on the Windows 8/ Windows Phone store called Wheel of Wealth. It uses the Wheel of Fortune font, puzzle board, and the same "Hangman+Wheel" format. It was pulled at some point from the store, but was brought back with a disclaimer saying that the game was not affiliated with Sony Pictures or Wheel of Fortune in any way.
Here's the point- I've seen Fremantle slap people with C&D letters for properties they haven't seriously monetized in decades. Wheel has been selling branded merchandise of all sorts since day one and seemingly just asked the developer to add a disclaimer. Maybe it's the rewording of the game's title, maybe each legal department's mileage varies as to how they handle these situations, or maybe it's a little of both.
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Here's the point- I've seen Fremantle slap people with C&D letters for properties they haven't seriously monetized in decades. Wheel has been selling branded merchandise of all sorts since day one and seemingly just asked the developer to add a disclaimer. Maybe it's the rewording of the game's title, maybe each legal department's mileage varies as to how they handle these situations, or maybe it's a little of both.
I'm thinking this is how Joytube has still been around, and I was playing that back in the mid-2000s.
For those who are unfamiliar, the site features games just like the ones that used to be on Flash Games - recreations of popular shows. Except...the rules and titles are altered to where it's not infringing on copyright, as it doesn't use the title, music or sound effects.
Not sure if that's what's allowed it to keep going after close to a decade, or if no one has caught on, but it is still kicking (heads off to play)...
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I'm thinking this is how Joytube has still been around
Oooh, just found a new timewaster. Thanks for the suggestion!
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I honestly forgot Joytube was still around. I like the stuff they got there.
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Was a great time waster when I worked overnights...enjoy! :-)