Cleaning Woman Not Cleaning Up
Carol Burnett filed a lawsuit last March against 20th Century Fox over it’s TV show “Family Guy” for copyright infringement for using her charwoman character and a snip of music in an episode of the show without permission. Fox says the segment was only 18 seconds long and they were therefore surprised by the complaint.
Friday, a judge in Los Angeles dismissed the suit, which means Ms. Burnett will not get to make her arguments as to why the show illegally infringed her copyright. The judge plans to issue a written ruling later which will tell us exactly why the suit was dismissed. A dismissal is usually for reasons other than lack of merit, so this does not necessarily mean that Fox was in the right with what they did. It just means something was wrong with the suit - probably in a procedural sense - and that it won’t get to go forward. That is speculation on my part, however, until we see the actual written ruling.
The Smoking Gun has published a copy of the original complaint, which goes into some detail, and they have also helpfully posted the “Family Guy” clip in question at their website.
The question is not whether or not the clip is funny, but whether they needed permission to do what they did.
May 29th, 2007 at 9:46 am
Thanks for posting this news. I would side with Carol Burnett on this one. Not only because FOX used her image/music without her permission but because the context they used it in, i.e., a porno shop, is diametrically opossed to what the Carol Burnett show was all about.