Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

“Save a Cocktail Napkin, Win a Lawsuit”

In a 2004 case entitled Grosso v. Miramax Film Corp., the Ninth Circuit ruled that federal copyright laws do not pre-empt state-law contract claims over allegedly swiped ideas for entertainment ventures, shows and products. Other federal judges have rejected that position, but a West Coast boom has ensued in idea-submission lawsuits against Hollywood and TV producers, and large plaintiff’s firms like L.A.’s Engstrom, Lipscomb and Lack are getting into the field. (Amanda Bronstad, National Law Journal, Jul. 31).

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3 Comments

  • Oh those wild and crazy folks at the 9th Circuit — see what they have wrought.

  • OK, so if you actually do pitch an idea to Hollywood — poor old Hollywood, so hard-pressed to defend itself — and they used it without paying you, and you can prove it, and you can prove damages, what exactly is the problem?

  • Ron,

    The problm is that “Hollywood” gets pitched at least thousands of ideas per year… Many of which is rathr specifically and intentionally never looks at (“Please don’t send us anything.”), along with many cases where idas sent in are specifically stated to becom their property, ALONG with many such ideas being duplicates of each other (so which one are they infringing?), AND, on top of all that…

    There’s the issue of proving that there was any influeence at all. That is, just because I sent an idea last year to somebody at XYZ company for a show about waitresses, and this year, XYZ company does inded put out a show about waitresses, does that man that it was MY idea they used, of was letter put in file 13 (the trash) without being read, and it so happens that some other creative genius came up with a similar idea?

    ALSO, “a show about waitresses” covers a rather large swath of territory, yes? So, all I need to do is send in every idea I can think of, thn, if they ever put out a show that resemblies any of those myriads of things, claim that it was MY idea first…

    NOT TO MENTION that many of these suits hav already been shown to have ben fraudulent – “Yep, I thought of it 5 years ago, and yep, here’s the cocktail napkin I wrote it on. Well, no, it’s not dated, but it really was 5 years ago!”

    In short, unless you’ve got a contract with them, if you sent in the idea, well, yaya, bragging rights among your friends. That’s all that should happen.

    • By Deoxy