Would some of David Wise's episodes violate copyright law?
 

Alright, so we all know David Wise had an... Interesting idea of how to... Ahem... "Revise" his scripts? By which I don't mean the way you normally revise your work by making sure the plot is free of errors, punch up the dialogue, add functioning drama, fix tired clichés and generally make it better quality. No I mean like... Literally replacing names and changing the context so that it can fit any random show he happened to be working on.



But it recently struck me, he had obviously already sold those scripts. Either that or he was under WFH contracting, meaning he likely didn't own the rights to any of them. At which point I have to wonder, would these episodes violate copyright law? OK, I know none of the companies he worked were likely to care because they didn't really consider these shows to be real entertainment, rather some bizarre cross breed of action figure advertisement and scam to get syndication money, which is nothing ever really came of it. Still, if they did actually care enough to take it to court, would there have been legal grounds for a lawsuit here?

I don’t think so.

Well that’s interesting. I had no idea they recycled some elements from Transformers cartoon but then again I hadn’t seen much of the Transformers cartoon it was before my time. I only knew of the obvious parodies such as “Enter The Fly” etc. and alot of the Splinter vs Shredder battles had a very “Star Wars” Yoda vs Darth Vader feel to it.

At least six episodes of TMNT were recycled from the Transformers cartoon, the season one finale in particular actually combines Microbots with Rebirth, so that's seven episodes of Transformers that somehow ended up in TMNT. Interestingly enough, the He-Man episode Day of the Machines was tweaked to make three different episodes of Transformers, two of which ended up in TMNT. In total, Wise managed to essentially sell the same script about ten times.

That's just what I know of though, the guy has over 180 writing credits. If anyone actually cares to map out what got recycled where, feel free to do so.

Don't tell me that you also believe that 90% of the music produced nowadays is "original and unique" as well.

Reconfiguring, repurposing and redressing happens all the time, everywhere. Most people don't notice or realize it.

Why do you obsess over a dead man so much?

Why not? After all, TMNT started out as a parody of other franchises.

You realise there is a difference between inspiration/homage/parody or even ending up making something similar multiple times and literally doing the same exact thing again to the point using the same dialogue, right?

And this is still about a legal question here, not artistic merit. If he did not own the rights to the scripts he had written, was he even legally allowed to reuse them like this?

Well it's been a long time since I took Business Law in college, but there is typically a "percent difference" ruling in copywrite law that tends to come into play. My understanding is that the U.S. government Office rules (i.e. Institutional Directives as a Public Administrator") are that there is no amount of "percent difference" that is allowed; yet if it goes to court a judge will likely evaluate the content for "percent difference" anyway.

Second, I'd guess that the storylines could fall under a "fair use" argument. Whether or not it would be a 100% cogent argument wouldn't matter when two companies are weighing the nonsense of going after each other over a "shrinking cartoon character story".

Lastly, use of the content either in Transformers or in TMNT infringes on the other I.P. or it's ability to make money. That is to say that basically nobody was going to abandon Transformers for TMNT because TMNT told the "shrinking cartoon character story" better.

It's a multi-faceted calculus. But I suppose in a simp-world or clown-world then yes someone could be sued over the "shrinking cartoon character story". But as to how far that would get is a crapshoot.

Thank you for giving an answer.

In MASK they had metal eating mites in an episode , same thing happened in Duck Tales

Same writer?

I looked up the writing credits and unless the writer used a pseudonym, it doesn't look like it. However, that is not a guarantee one didn't recycle the script from the other, "Meet the Wigglenog" in SRMTHG and "The Weird World of Wyrm" in TMNT officially have two different writers but it is a very obvious David Wise style recycling.