If there's one area of entertainment where originality does not seem to be a prerequisite for creative production, it is television formats. As soon as one particular formula proves itself to be a hit, TV producers around the world will run away with the idea. 

Think of Big Brother, Pop Idol and many more successful formula’s: imitation after imitation appears on our screens. But that may all change with an upcoming ruling in a lawsuit filed by Japan's Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS), alleging that "ABC and Wipeout producer Endemol infringe copyrights to TBS television formats by replicating their TV shows (namely Takeshi's Castle, Most Extreme Elimination Challenge (MXC), Sasuke and Ninja Warrior). According to TBS, ABC and Endemol took popular components from their formats and even sought to manipulate Google into sending traffic for search terms 'Takeshi's Castle' and 'Ninja Warrior' to a Wipeout-sponsored link.

Television formats have been legally caught in a place where copyright law cannot adequately protect them since their emergence in the 1960s. Only if elements of a show are an exact copy of an earlier show, there is a chance to prevent a producer from airing it. The Japanese court case may change the game considerably for producers of reality programs who have shown a preference for formats that are a guaranteed success and relatively simple to set up. This is because the TV-shows in question are so common, that if TBS wins this case, the scope of copyright protection for television formats would increase spectacularly, at least in Japan.

ABC's lawyers explain that the said programmes are in fact quite plain and stand in a long line of obstacle-course competitions, dating back to the '60s. “TBS remarkably claims copyright protection on obstacle concepts ubiquitous in the public domain, such as 'rope swings,' 'mechanical bulls' and 'pole vaults.'" 

If the Japanese court that handles this case will really rule in favour of TBS, that may very well lead to an explosive growth of lawsuits on tv formats. Until now, probably three quarters of such lawsuits are fruitless. But, as Techdirt rightly points out, if common elements of popular shows become compartmentable pieces of litigation, every detective show we know will be in danger of having to pay royalties to the estate of Edgar Allan Poe. The truth must be somewhere in the middle 

source: Techdirt, Hollywood Reporter