The Associated Press reports that the federal judge hearing the lawsuit brought by CBS and the producers of Survivor against ABC and the producers of I'm A Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here! will probably rule on CBS's request for an injunction on Jan. 13, 2003. If U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska grants the injunction, ABC will not be able to air Celebrity during the February sweeps, as it currently intends to do.
As previously discussed here and here, the lawsuit alleges that Celebrity infringes on the intellectual property of Survivor. The current hearings deal solely with CBS's request for an injunction and will be followed by a full trial on the infringement issue, regardless of whether the injunction is granted. To prevail in this request, CBS and Survivor have to show both that they are likely to prevail in the full trial and that monetary damages will not be sufficient to make them whole if they ultimately do prevail.
To make their case, CBS presented two main witnesses. One was Charlie Parsons, the co-creator of Survivor and co-owner of Castaway Productions, which licenses the show's concept , who testified to the infringement of his intellectual property. Parsons likened Celebrity to a copy of Survivor made on tracing paper with slight changes "in the hopes that they would get away with it." The other was CBS president Les Moonves, who claimed that Celebrity would not only cheapen the Survivor franchise but would block CBS from doing its own celebrity version of Survivor.
For the defense, ABC lawyer Thomas Smart defended blatant copying of TV shows. "The history of television is derived from generic concepts," he said. "It is in the execution, which is the expression, that the protection arises. We have not infringed their expression." Perhaps Smart was thinking of his network's own The Bachelor series, which is currently being blatantly copied by Fox's Joe Millionaire. (For those who may have wondered, this lawsuit explains why ABC has taken no action against Fox.)
Also testifying for ABC was James Allen, who somewhat unbelievably claimed to have come up with the idea for Celebrity in 1996, a year before the first Survivor series, Expedition: Robinson, aired in Sweden (where it was a sensation, just as it has been in the U.S). No word on how his 'original idea' just happened to be an exact clone of Survivor.
The stakes in this battle are huge for both ABC and CBS. Celebrity was a runaway hit during its one airing in Great Britain prior to the lawsuits, despite the fact that Survivor U.K. previously stiffed twice. ABC is hoping both to repeat Celebrity's U.K. success and to cripple the seemingly-invincible Survivor U.S. franchise. On the other hand, CBS is justifiably worried that, even if it wins the copyright-infringement lawsuit, the damge to Survivor (as well as to this spring's Survivor 6) may be irreversible if Celebrity duplicates its U.K. performance. The damage may already be starting -- notice that the headline to the AP story spells the show's name as 'Surviver'!
Once again, stay tuned....
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