Could CBS sue over The Orville?

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Graham Kennedy
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Could CBS sue over The Orville?

Post by Graham Kennedy »

So I was thinking about this today. My understanding is that you can avoid a lawsuit on two grounds - one, that what you are doing may be similar to their show, but it's also similar to other stuff that predates their show. Meaning that aspect of the show isn't something that they invented. And two, that a given aspect does originate with their show, but that others have also copied it and they didn't sue them, thus tacitly accepting that these things are fair use for anybody.

So what points of comparison are there, and could CBS sue over them?

Probably the Orville's great ace in the hole here is the movie Forbidden Planet. Predating Star Trek by about almost ten years, FB has many of the defining aspects of the show. A futuristic spacecraft which travels across interstellar distances to other planets. The ship is operated by a military-style organisation, rather than by a group of egghead scientist types. They're armed with energy weapons. They wear futuristic uniforms. They encounter strange creatures and settings, with ethical dilemmas to solve. Even some of the relationships between the command staff are eerily similar - the Captain, a scientisty/engineer type and a Doctor type.

Trek might claim to have invented ideas like using colours to differentiate different divisions of the crew, but the US Navy has been doing that n aircraft carriers since World War II.
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Re: Could CBS sue over The Orville?

Post by Mikey »

I don't believe any sort of lawsuit would stand for too long, based on the factor that you've cited - film and television have been doing these things for decades, and no claim to IP has been made for all that time.

If the Orville used a particular 'Trek-specific terminology - "warp drive" or "phaser weapon" or somesuch - then I could see it being worth a cease-and-desist letter, but nothing so far would lead me to think that such action is feasible.
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Re: Could CBS sue over The Orville?

Post by Monroe »

Nah, everything Orville has picked up is fair use. The humor aspect could be argued makes it a parody and you can parody anything- hence why SNL is in business. But even without that, it's not using the same terms. Quantium Drive instead of Warp, Union instead of Federation etc. CBS / Paramount would have a nearly impossible task bringing a lawsuit for a similar show. It would also open up a massive can of worms between shows in the same genre. Orville is safe from a lawsuit. The only angle I could see is if the Orville blatantly rips off a Star Trek episode, then they could be sued for that episode. But to do so they'd have to virtually copy the script,not just some ideas.
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Re: Could CBS sue over The Orville?

Post by Graham Kennedy »

Mikey wrote:I don't believe any sort of lawsuit would stand for too long, based on the factor that you've cited - film and television have been doing these things for decades, and no claim to IP has been made for all that time.

If the Orville used a particular 'Trek-specific terminology - "warp drive" or "phaser weapon" or somesuch - then I could see it being worth a cease-and-desist letter, but nothing so far would lead me to think that such action is feasible.
Agreed on that, and they've been careful to avoid using such terminology.

It's early days of course - we don't even know what the orville calls their phaser-equivalent, or torpedo weapons, but if they ever bother to name them, they're obviously going to avoid direct Trek terms. I wonder if they have lawyers go over the scripts to see if it's too close?
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Re: Could CBS sue over The Orville?

Post by Talondor »

Could the producers and writers of Orville claim that alot of the technology used are valid science, if only in theory? If someone actually invents a teleporter or warp drive, could CBS sue?
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Re: Could CBS sue over The Orville?

Post by Mikey »

Maybe they could sue the people who used those names, I.e. the inventors.
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Re: Could CBS sue over The Orville?

Post by Graham Kennedy »

Talondor wrote:Could the producers and writers of Orville claim that alot of the technology used are valid science, if only in theory? If someone actually invents a teleporter or warp drive, could CBS sue?
Depends on what you call it, maybe. Trek has no claim to "Teleport", and teleport is probably such a generic and widely used name that nobody could claim it. If you specifically called it a "transporter" you might possibly have an issue.

Same with warp drive. Call it a hyperdrive, no problem. Invent something generic like "quantum drive" and you're still okay. But you might be in trouble if you went with "warp drive".

Interestingly something similar happened with Doctor Who. They made their Tardis look like a police box, of course. Police boxes went out of use for a long time, but the show got a copyright on the design in 1996 and started merchandising it heavily, and the cops sued since they had built some new ones - they house CCTV cameras on top and have direct lines to the local station, etc. The police argued that they owned the design since they had originated it.

The judge ruled that the public only associated the design with the police in terms of its police use, not as a general merchandising item, and added "I bear in mind that for most of the period since the police call box was taken out of service, the only sight the public at large would have had of this item of street furniture has been in the TV programme Dr Who, provided by the BBC where it is a Tardis, a fictional time travelling machine with the external appearance of a police box." The BBC won the case.
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