Those shows were made before the Viacom/CBS/Paramount split.
Honestly I think the who 25% design thing is just for merchandising. They wanted them to design a new Enterprise that was legally distinct so they could sell it as it's own thing.
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Honestly I think the who 25% design thing is just for merchandising. They wanted them to design a new Enterprise that was legally distinct so they could sell it as it's own thing.
The more butt Conan showed, the more likely I’d be to buy the bookAs I understand it, OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL deployed teams of lawyers to make sure the Oz in the movie was sufficiently different from the classic MGM version, while still being recognizable to general audiences, with even the exact shade of green used for the Wicked Witch's skin coming under scrutiny.
Reminds me of the time that I found myself immersed in a serious, in-depth discussion, involving various grown-up publishing professionals, regarding the burning issue of precisely how much bare butt could be exposed on the cover of a CONAN novel. "I went to college for this . . . ?"
Believe it or not, the question of just how much nudity we could get away with on the CONAN covers was an endless debate back in the day. The issue was a regional one: some sales territories were more conservative about such things than others so there was always concern that the books wouldn't get stocked or displayed in certain territories if there was too much bare skin on display.
But I digress . ...
But I digress . ...
I read the original Facebook thread, and there was a comment from Scott Schneider (the artist who created the digital model of the ship) suggesting that maybe it was just a contractual loophole resulting from the CBS/Paramount split -- not necessarily that there's some overt policy banning show X from using element Y, but more just that the split means the process of getting approvals for things has to go through more people than it used to. So maybe (this is me interpreting) there are instances where the producers decide it's just simpler or faster to avoid the rigmarole of getting all those approvals lined up, so they change the design enough that they don't need to.
Still, Eaves and Schneider both admit that the decisions are happening above their pay grade and they're just trying to make sense of things as best they can. So we're not getting the whole story here.
Ensign? He has the same rank as you.
OK, I think I get the 'this entity has the rights to this part of Star Trek' and so forth, esp. when it comes to other media (books, comic books, models, etc,).
But what I don't understand is why does a CBS created show (Discovery) not have the rights to use a design from a CBS owned show (the original series). If Discovery were being filmed by someone else being licensed by CBS (say Universal just for the fun of it), then I can understand. They only would have the rights to Discovery and would need permission from CBS to use anything from the other shows.
But aren't Discovery and the original series owned by the SAME entity, CBS. I would think they could use anything they please from something they owned all the rights to already.
But what I don't understand is why does a CBS created show (Discovery) not have the rights to use a design from a CBS owned show (the original series). If Discovery were being filmed by someone else being licensed by CBS (say Universal just for the fun of it), then I can understand. They only would have the rights to Discovery and would need permission from CBS to use anything from the other shows.
But aren't Discovery and the original series owned by the SAME entity, CBS. I would think they could use anything they please from something they owned all the rights to already.
I don't think we get to understand. We're the customers at the restaurant; we get to eat the meal, but we don't get to walk into the kitchen and kibitz the cooks while they make it. There are all sorts of decisions that we wouldn't understand if we saw them being made because it's not our job to understand them. We're just there to partake of the end result.
Still, like I said, Schneider's suggestion was that there are just more people who need to sign off on using something than there used to be. That may still include the same CBS execs as before (or their successors), but it sounds like it's expanded to include other people as well. They have to get more people on the same page than they did before, and that makes it more complicated and time-consuming, so maybe they just choose the path of least resistance instead. I mean, it still looks enough like the Enterprise that we know what it is, so that's good enough for most purposes.
I thought @King Daniel Beyond was referring to Pocket, that is why I was confused.
Yeah, I know. To be honest, it wasn't until It was brought up here that I got curious about it. A sort of head scratcher, hmmm, they own both shows, you'd think they could do what they want sort of thing.
When I saw the ship initially, I thought they just made a few 'minor' adjustments to make it look more advanced or something. I didn't realize it was for possible legal reasons, which piqued my curiosity.
Yet. There is very little merchandise YET. It’s only appeared in the last minute of the season one finale right now, but with the announcement of Captain Pike having been cast, it seems entirely possible that the Enterprise will have a serious role in the next season, and so from there, there will be more opportunity for tie-in merchandise.
Yes, but the Discoprise has also been on-screen for all of fifteen seconds. They're probably planning for the future, as Discovery has the potential for more (or, let's be frank, any) merchandising opportunities down the line, and the revamped Enterprise gets more exposure (to say nothing of the rumor that TPTB have an eye towards launching a Pike's-Enterprise spin-off series running parallel to Discovery in a year or two).
Wow. Hadn’t heard that one.
Hardly.
Plus, the first part of A Pocket Full of Lies gets published in January and the second in March, with RotF: By the Code in-between in February. So, that's basically two novels in the first three months, or two novels in six months if you want to look at it that way...Just saw on Facebook that Cross Cult, the German Publisher, offers no translated novels from October till December 2018. They obviously have difficulties with sales figures......So they spilt A Pocket Full of Lies into two books.
I wonder if there is something happening at CBS or even National Amusements that is causing the holdup.
Well after all, if he spent five years in law school he's not exactly going to get the plum jobs, since it's a three-year curriculum.
Sued by whom? The same company owns all of the underlying intellectual property.
Anyway, as @David cgc noted upthread, the "25% different" thing is not an actual legal principle. (Speaking for myself, the discussion on this forum over the last day or two is literally the first time I'd ever heard of the concept, and FWIW I got an A+ in my intellectual property law class back in the day.) The relevant legal principle is that a depiction of a visual element of a copyrighted work infringes the original if there is "substantial similarity"... which is to say, if a reasonable person would recognize what it was based on. FWIW the Klingon ships in DSC don't necessarily meet that standard (more's the pity!), but the Enterprise damn sure does, as do lots of other design elements.
Exactly. That's the thing that marks it as not a legal issue... because if it were one, something that someone could potentially sue over, then that basic fact (that it's recognizable) would leave CBS open to liability. The design changes in DSC have to be driven by creative or marketing decisions of some kind.
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