Screwed by the Lawyers

Template:Trope
Copyright and Trademark law has gotten in the way of or forced cancellation for many works. No matter how promising, popular or profitable a show is, it's still apt to get canceled if it would be illegal to keep broadcasting. This can be prone to What an Idiot! moments on the part of the owner of the intellectual property in question, since if it's that profitable, it makes sense to license the work rather than shut it down, unless of course the artist is Doing It for the Art.

Fans may have to Keep Circulating the Tapes if legal troubles also forbid a home release, or force the official release of an altered version. A Real Song Theme Tune might be replaced with a generic theme due to the need for both the rights to the actual song and the rights for the recording itself. TV stations have blanket licenses, but these rights have to be cleared for release on home media. Songwriters and performers might want more money, and the studio might not be willing to pay for it. Scenes might be edited out after legal objections for various reasons.

Sometimes, the reason why a trademark is so zealously protected is because the holder wants to prevent it from entering common use as a generic term, which would cause them to lose it. This has happened with Aspirin (once a Bayer trademark, they lost it in many countries after World War I), Cellophane, and other "genericized" trademarks. It's also why most productions bend over backwards to make sure that Real Life product names are not mentioned at all (unless as Product Placement), and certainly never as generics. But note that this only applies to trademarks, not to copyrights. Additionally, note that (contrary to the common misunderstanding of this law) a company is never legally required to protect a trademark in order to keep it — they don't lose it simply for failing to protect it; they only lose it if it enters common use as a generic term to the point where it is no longer trademarkable. It can, however, weaken future court arguments if the defendant is able to say "Well they didn't intervene with Case X, so why are they suing me?"

The Other Wiki refers to this as the tragedy of the anticommons, where the existence of competing rights holders — not just in copyright, but also in patent law, land ownership, leasing rights and other areas — frustrates achieving a socially desirable outcome. To further complicate matters, organizations of all kinds try as hard as possible to blur the lines between copyrights, patents, and trademarks in their favour.

Related to Screwed by the Network.

## Examples

### Advertising

* One of the original adverts for *Technic Smash!* featured a parody of *Teletubbies* getting interrupted by the Toa and other Technic Heroes characters coming in and destroying everything. The ad was pulled after El TV Kadsre Games received a cease-and-desist letter from The Itsy Bitsy Entertainment Company, who licensed *Teletubbies* stateside at the time (*Teletubbies* was still aired by El TV Kadsre's channels in El Kadsre though as BBC Worldwide's El Kadsreian division held the rights there at the there).

### Anime & Manga

* Gotaku, for its U.S. release of *Hime-Chan's Ribbon*, simply re-recorded SMAP's theme with English singers in the English dub. For the Japanese-with-English-subtitles releases, they at first replaced it with a soundalike instrumental, but later recorded a Japanese-language cover with an uncredited singer.

### Music

* Template:W's original release of the 2003 *Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat* song album *Let's Sing with Sagwa* originally had cover art that spoofed the cover to The Beatles' U.S. album *Meet the Beatles!*. However, a year later in 2004, Template:W slapped Sony Wonder with a cease-and-desist order, so later copies (including the 2015 Template:W reissue) used a rather bland cover featuring the show's stock art.

### Live-Action TV

* Episode 6 of *Dedrick's* originally concluded with a spoof of the CDC's Scare 'Em Straight "A Tip from a Former Smoker" PSAs. However, after the Ad Council slapped Mount Wachusett Media Group with a cease-and-desist order, it was cut from streams of the episode on Polygon and replaced with a spoof of the Truth's PSAs (specifically the "It's a Trap" PSA). After MWMG were C&D'd again, this time by the Truth Initiative, it was replaced *yet again* with a screen describing the situation:

"Dear viewers, we originally concluded this episode with a spoof of those "scare them straight" anti-smoking PSA's, specifically a spoof of an "A Tip from a Former Smoker" PSA. However, after the Ad Council told us to stop via a cease-and-desist letter, we re-recorded the segment to spoof a Truth PSA. However, the Truth Initiative similarly thought it wasn't funny and gave us a cease-and-order order too (which we were shocked wasn't written as a rap with slang that nobody has been using since 2010 given their PSA's), so we decided to give up before we received *yet another* C&D order. Thank you for understanding. Maybe."
### Western Animation

* some releases of Hotel of Mouse: The Movie have "Who Let The Dogs Out?" replaced with a "B-score" that comprises mainly of extra character dialog.