Did CBS Steal the Tardigrade Idea?

[dahj]

OTOH is pretty obvious the live-action version of the same tardigrade idea.

Obvious, eh?

So to be clear your contention is that the writers stole the idea when they were writing it, then the director stole the idea when he was thinking how to film what was written, then the art department stole the idea when they were sketching the concept art for it, and then the vfx department stole the idea actually making it, and in this chain of like 50 people (at the very least) involved in stealing this idea everybody stole the same idea from some obscure game and nobody at any point realized that maybe they should change it up a bit so that it isn't "obvious"?

Makes sense...

 

[Rahul]

Obvious, eh?

So to be clear your contention is that the writers stole the idea when they were writing it, then the director stole the idea when he was thinking how to film what was written, then the art department stole the idea when they were sketching the concept art for it, and then the vfx department stole the idea actually making it, and in this chain of like 50 people (at the very least) involved in stealing this idea everybody stole the same idea from some obscure game and nobody at any point realized that maybe they should change it up a bit so that it isn't "obvious"?

Makes sense...

One guy with a producers credit stumbling upon this game while doing online research about Tardigrades in space environments would be more than enough.
Not an offbeat suggestion if you ask me...

 

[cultcross]

They opened up Chrome and typed "Tardigrades in space," to which creates a legal paradox.

Which if you do, brings up endless articles covering actual tardigrades in space, from 2007 and later. The vastly more likely inspiration for Discovery.

 

[Rahul]

Which if you do, brings up endless articles covering actual tardigrades in space, from 2007 and later. The vastly more likely inspiration for Discovery.

So you suggest the creators of DIS never got to page 2 during their Google-research about ideas for their show?
Well, that sounds... actually plausible.

 

[CorporalClegg]

So in your opinion it's astronomically impossible that:

A) Some nerds that are into Star Trek also are into Steam games?

As I already stated there a 730 million steam games. In Steam's database. Only of which, about 15,000 have been released and are on the Steam store. This hasn't been released. So yes. Astronomically impossible, unless you're specifically out there looking for it.

B) someone had a vague idea about including Tardigrades on the show, did a small google search to learn more about Tardigrades in space environment... and came across a trailer for a game about Tardigrades in space? And then just simply lifted the aesthetics and some ideas?

The whole crux of the lawsuit is CBS stole the Tardigrade idea. How could they have stolen it if they were already on Google looking for it?

 

[CorporalClegg]

So you suggest the creators of DIS never got to page 2 during their Google-research about ideas for their show?
Well, that sounds... actually plausible.

I can say with 100% confidence that this game didn't appear on Google page 2 prior to last October.

 

[cultcross]

So you suggest the creators of DIS never got to page 2 during their Google-research about ideas for their show?
Well, that sounds... actually plausible.

Doesn't come up anywhere in the first 5 pages for me, got bored looking after that. Google Search results aren't consistent from person to person due to their tracking, I imagine you see it because you've already looked for, or at, the game.

I see mainstream news articles, I see New Scientist features, I see academic papers, all sorts of resources on tardigrades in space that could inspire a TV writer who isn't conducting such an elaborate plagiarism conspiracy that he even made sure casting hired a blonde actor to play Stamets, and a blue uniform was designed by wardrobe, just to make sure it was the same for one shot in an episode they hadn't written yet.

 

[Rahul]

The whole crux of the lawsuit is CBS stole the Tardigrade idea. How could they have stolen it if they were already on Google looking for it?

They said early concepts for the show had a talking tardigrade crewmember. I absolutely believe that. THEN logically comes research to fill your idea.
I have absolutely no doubt it's possible someone higher-up could have ended seeing the trailer for this game if he was searching for this very specific topic online. And then switched up their originally loose idea (talking tardigrade crewmember) to resemble something much closer to the game (actually FTL-capable, giant blue tardigrade with lots of blue sparkles).

I'm not saying it definitely happened this way. But IMO it's everything else but implausible.
No matter what, the resemblance is striking, and veerrrry awkward for CBS.

 

[Rahul]

..such an elaborate plagiarism conspiracy that he even made sure casting hired a blonde actor to play Stamets, and a blue uniform was designed by wardrobe....

Eh. I don't believe in such a conspiracy. As I said earlier, blue uniforms in a dark grey/blue lit metallic environment is probably the most generic futuristic look possible. And for some reason most gay couples in any media are interracial, too (probably allows them to check two minority boxes at once). And even if it did happen, it almost definitely wasn't intentional.

I just think it's entirely possible someone stumbled upon this specific idea and visuals and - probably unintentionally and without even remembering where those ideas came from - incorporated them into his new show. Wouldn't be the first time nor the last time that happened, something like that is actually pretty common in any artistic business. What makes this situation unique is that one side doesn't have a giant corporation behind them - in regular cases, the lawyers representing both sides simply would chat up and find a compensation depending on how big the similarities are. Pretty normal stuff.

Normally these entertainent corporations try to hide these things as hard as possible though - they're not great press. This Indie developer simply is lacking the backchannels for negotiations though, wich is why we have heard about this at all in the first place. That's why this case is (kinda' but not really) blowing up. Under different circumstances - if this were a game from another corporation - both sides would have remained silent and we simply wouldn't have heard about it.

 

[CorporalClegg]

They said early concepts for the show had a talking tardigrade crewmember. I absolutely believe that. THEN logically comes research to fill your idea.
I have absolutely no doubt it's possible someone higher-up could have ended seeing the trailer for this game if he was searching for this very specific topic online. And then switched up their originally loose idea (talking tardigrade crewmember) to resemble something much closer to the game .

But there's still no case here because the end products are different. The only thing they have in common is its tardigrades and they're somehow involved in space travel. The mechanisms are completely different. Either way, CBS came up with tardigrades on its own and ended in a different place. So even if there was something to be stolen here, it would be virtually impossible to make some kind of legal connection that warranted compensation, even if they had Fuller's browser history.

lots of blue sparkles

Now that I'm on it, going through all the dev posts, there's a lot of stuff there for CBS to make a pretty convincing countersuit.

 

[Rahul]

But there's still no case here because the end products are different. The only thing they have in common is its tardigrades and they're somehow involved in space travel. The mechanisms are completely different. Either way, CBS came up with tardigrades on its own and ended in a different place. So even if there was something to be stolen here, it would be virtually impossible to make some kind of legal connection that warranted compensation, even if they had Fuller's browser history.

Now that I'm on it, going through all the dev posts, there's a lot of stuff there for CBS to make a pretty convincing countersuit.

Every single one thing being identical is a coincidence. All of them being in one place? Well...

You do know that the people that made the movie "The magnificant seven" had to pay off Akira Kurosawa because they were using his basic idea of "The seven Samurai", right? By your logic, they simply could have said: "Well, this one has Samurai, ours has Cowboys. So we might have started out somewhere similar, but the end product clearly is something completely different!".

That's....not... how copyright of ideas work. That's not how any of this works. Really.

 

[CorporalClegg]

That's ridiculous. Everything isn't identical. At most a few cherry-picked things have a similar likeness.

More importantly, your analogy fails because -- for it to be similar, then Roberts or Sturges would have had to have started with a story about seven cowboys and then found Kurosawa by accident and Kurosawa would have had to have been nothing more than a fan-film director whos films a few dozen people in the whole world knew of.

But that's immaterial because there are whole chunks of script that are borrowed. It's a clear and obvious breach of intellectual property.

This, however, is not.

 

[dahj]

One guy

Every single one thing being identical is a coincidence. All of them being in one place? Well...

So this one guy somehow influenced hundreds of different people to do things exactly the same as they're in this one game he read about on the internet or what in the hells are you even arguing here anymore?

You're contradicting yourself and common sense in general...

 

[Rahul]

So this one guy somehow influenced hundreds of different people to do things exactly the same as they're in this one game he read about on the internet or what in the hells are you even arguing here anymore?

You're contradicting yourself and common sense in general...

.... what?
Did you actually read the posts you're quoting? One guy with a producer credit can veeery easily put his stamp on a whole lot of issues on a show - in this case, reusing an idea that's actually not his own, down to the details.
This shouldn't be that hard to grasp...

 

[CorporalClegg]

down to the details.

Nope.

 

[dahj]

.... what?

Pretty much my default response to your constantly shifting spins on how this mysterious "one guy" for reasons unknown decided to exercise his producing power and influence hundreds of people to adapt bits of some random game in a very high profile show while absolutely making sure that it's "obvious" that he's stealing from that game...

 

[BillJ]

Could simply be a Gene Coon/"Arena" scenario.

 

[Jinn]

Could simply be a Gene Coon/"Arena" scenario.

Would you mind elaborating? I have no clue what that scenario is.

 

[BillJ]

Would you mind elaborating? I have no clue what that scenario is.

Gene Coon had read the original "Arena" by Frederic Brown. They were in a script crunch and Coon went home and banged out his "Arena" over a weekend. Never consciously realizing he was drawing from that story. Someone ended up catching it before the episode aired and they worked out an agreement with Brown to use the story.

 

[Jinn]

Gene Coon had read the original "Arena" by Frederic Brown. They were in a script crunch and Coon went home and banged out his "Arena" over a weekend. Never consciously realizing he was drawing from that story. Someone ended up catching it before the episode aired and they worked out an agreement with Brown to use the story.

Ah, okay, thanks for clarifying

I think something like that could be the case, but even then everything beyond "teleporting tardigrade" is different, let alone the actual story of the show, so I don't think that the guy will do well in court.