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CBS Fails to Block ABC’s ‘Glass House’

Jun 15, 2012  •  Post A Comment

CBS lost in its bid to block ABC from airing “Glass House,” a new reality show that CBS thinks is too similar to its own “Big Brother.”

U.S. District Judge Gary Feess today denied CBS’s request for a restraining order to stop the premiere of the ABC show, TheWrap.com reports. "Glass House" is set to premiere June 18.

CBS claimed that ABC’s show was employing proprietary information that was owned by "Big Brother," especially with several staffers on the ABC show having formerly been part of the CBS production. Feess said in his ruling that he believed the intense audience-participation portion of "Glass House" would make it quite different from the action on "Big Brother."

The judge also said that "Glass House" would not infringe on "Big Brother’s" success.

Feess told Scott Edelman, CBS’s attorney, "This sounds like ‘Survivor’ in a house. … A lot of things affect expression but are not expression, so they can’t be copyright protected."

Edelman pointed out that the "Glass House" executive producer, Kenny Rosen, is a former "Big Brother" producer and still possesses the manuals from that production. "We clearly have violations of [a non-disclosure agreement]," said Edelman.

ABC contended in court that similarities between the shows are merely those shared by many reality series. The network also denied stealing any former "Big Brother" workers with the idea of creating a duplicate of that show.

One Comment

  1. ABC has to be thanking CBS for this. I never heard of the show before all of the publicity around the lawsuit. ABC could never have bought this kind of multi-media publicity for a summer replacement show like this.

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