The Glass House has only aired 2 hours of the live feeds and CBS is still not budging. Earlier on Wednesday, CBS made an aggressive move in the never-ending lawsuit and demanded that ABC hand over emails, texts, and many other supporting documents for the series. Filed in the US District Court in California, CBS is asking for all documents from January 1, 2008 to present “CONCERNING ‘Big Brother’ and created in the context of or RELATING TO the development, pre-production, or production of ‘GLASS HOUSE.'” Basically, this would include all of the tweets, texts, emails, facebook posts/messages, and any other means of social media.
CBS is also asking for all series and episode outlines, training manuals, master control room manuals, pitches and other documents relating to The Glass House‘s method of production. The network is additionally asking for blueprints, plans, drawings and other documents relating to direction and set-up of the actual house itself. According to internet reports, ABC already has handed over such things as the Glass House Player Handbook, plans for approved contestant challenges, a detailed floor plan, episode structure, schematics of the master control room and a list of video equipment and media management software.
Big Brother 14 – It’s Rumors Time!
As we previously reported, Producer Kenny Rosen was recently deposed regarding his role, and CBS is now asking that he be called back to answer questions legal counsel initially advised him not to respond to. Rosen initially noted that The Glass House was inspired by The Hunger Games, but later noted similarities to Big Brother.
We’ve been covering this story since CBS filed the suit back in May. The suit asks that ABC and its show be blocked from using any information gleaned from Big Brother, as well as ordering former Big Brother staffers to pay $500,000 each for allegedly violating their previous nondisclosure agreements with CBS. ABC has countered that in explaining that staff followed Rosen from show to show and deny any breaks in previous Big Brother contracts.
CBS has given ABC 48 hours to respond to these requests. ABC of course has noted that this is unreasonable and has rebuked this request. As initially reported by The Hollywood Reporter, “This case is about a television network with a stale franchise — Big Brother — that hopes aggressive litigation tactics will disrupt the premiere of a major competitor’s new, state-of-the-art reality show,” says ABC. ABC went on to say that CBS is not entitled to “additional extremely expedited and highly onerous discovery” and that it will do no good. “This is a red herring. Big Brother has been on the air for 13 years. Everyone in America with a TV has total access to its creative expression. Even if CBS were to obtain evidence tomorrow that every employee at Glass House engaged in a massive conspiracy to copy Big Brother (which, of course, they did not), that would not provide more evidence of access beyond that which CBS already has. Nor would such a confession relieve CBS of its obligation to demonstrate substantial similarity.”
There is a hearing, per CBS’s request, for a temporary restraining order scheduled on Friday June 15 at 9 am. local time.
What do you all think of this never-ending suit? Should CBS cut the fight or keep it going? More importantly, do you think CBS will push the clock and get Glass House off air? Let us know below! We’re also discussing both shows in our FORUMS 24/7!
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