Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Japanese network sues over Wipeout

Tokyo Broadcasting System has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against ABC America, charging that Wipeout is "a blatant copycat" of several of its classic Japanese competition series.

TBS owns the Japanese copyright to the obstacle course series Takeshi's Castle, co-owns the right to Spike TV's MXC and owns the copyright to competition series Sasuke.

"From the moment ABC revealed Wipeout to the public, that program has been routinely described as a 'rip-off' and 'knock-off' of Plaintiff's shows," read the complaint, filed on Monday (local time) in the US District Court in Los Angeles.

"ABC's willful and wrongful use of Plaintiff's shows to create Wipeout is egregious, inexcusable and not to be tolerated."

Among the charges are that ABC bought search terms such as MXC on Google to help drive traffic to the official Wipeout page, and that specific obstacles in Wipeout were knock-offs of challenges in the Japanese shows.

"Wipeout unlawfully appropriates the premise, the format, the sequence of events, the introductory segment, the tone, the scene setups, the narration, the dialogue that arises from constructed situations ... of the shows," the lawsuit said.

Successful reality TV series often draw lawsuits from parties alleging the concept was stolen. However, the complaints usually involve producing entities.

A major broadcast network suing another over a reality series is extremely rare.

In 2002, CBS accused ABC of knocking off Survivor with its reality effort I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here. But a judge ruled in ABC's favour and allowed the show to continue.

Notably missing from the defendant list on TBS's complaint is Endemol USA, the company producing Wipeout.

A separate lawsuit against Endemol is reportedly pending.

In addition to its successful run in the US, Endemol is actively selling the show's format around the world, directly competing with the formats for TBS's series. In Australia, Wipeout airs on the Nine Network.

The suit on behalf of TBS was filed by top litigation attorney Larry Stein, known mostly for his high-profile profit participation cases.

He has filed two major complaints against ABC in the past, one involving the producers of long-running comedy Home Improvement and one involving Who Wants To Be A Millionaire producer Celador, which is awaiting trial.

ABC and Stein had no comment.

- Reuters