Facebook and “The Sopranos”
posted by Lawrence Cunningham
What do Facebook and “The Sopranos” have in common? A wildly successful franchise followed with lawsuits by also-rans claiming the idea was theirs and seeking a big slice of the riches. As discussed on this blog, the Winklevoss twin brothers (Cameron and Tyler) claim a huge slice of Facebook. They say they had a contract with Mark Zucerkberg to work for them, but Zuck breached it and stole their ideas. Those claims are likely losers, as my post suggested, and so too are claims for IP misappropriation, as a comment from Nancy on that thread attests.
The lawsuit is an eerie replay of the claim municipal judge Robert Baer made in 2002 that he had come up with the idea for the wildly-successful HBO series, “The Sopranos.” Like the twins, Baer, a wannabe screenwriter, claimed the idea was stolen, in this case by David Chase, the writer/producer who acknowledged discussions and research assistance but no deal, express or implied, to co-develop the show or split profits with Baer.
As with the twins, Baer asserted many claims, including breach of contract, IP misappropriation, and quasi-contract. As in the case of the twins, all were dead losers, but thanks to the grueling nature of the judicial process, Baer stretched the case out over 5 years, with 3 federal district court opinions, 2 Third Circuit appellate opinions and a jury verdict. (The twins’ case is already older than that and even more unseemly.)
The sole claim that reached the jury was Baer’s claim of quasi-contract: that he conferred a benefit on Chase by giving him the idea for the show and its protagonist, Tony Soprano. To win such a claim based on sharing ideas requires showing that the ideas were novel. That was, of course, a non-starter: the idea was for a North Jersey mobster show set in the underworld’s known stomping grounds! The judge would only let the jury consider the value of spadework services Baer rendered, which it found were so modest that Chase had repaid them by reading a Baer screenplay.
A similar fate should befall a twins’ claim against Zuck for quasi-contract. By 2004 when they say they came up with their idea for a web-based social network, there was little novel about it. As Nancy wrote in her comments to my earlier post: “FB and ConnectU [the twins' trademark] weren’t the first or only companies to come up with this type of social networking site.”
What Facebook and “The Sopranos” have in common with each other, they both have in common with innumerable innovations that yield huge profits. With the winners out ahead, the losers, weeping that they missed the rare chance to make it big, gamble on America’s second-favorite pastime, litigation. But, most of the time, they lose, and rightly so.
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For the final opinion in “The Sopranos” case, see Baer v. Chase, WL 1237850 (D.N.J. April 27, 2007). Others include Baer v. Chase, 2005 WL 1106487 (D.N.J. April 29, 2005); Baer v. Chase, 2004 WL 350050 (D.N.J. Feb. 20, 2004); Bear v. Chase, 392 F.3d 609 (3d Cir. 2004).
January 24, 2011 at 10:46 pm
Posted in: Contract Law & Beyond, Current Events
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Responses (1)
Timothy P. Flynn - January 25, 2011 at 5:45 am
Lawrence:
Great post. I was unaware that the great series “Sopranos” was dogged w/ long-running litigation. I agree that litigation is, as you point out, America’s second-favorite pastime. IP is a very interesting area of the law. If you have a great idea, be careful who you discuss it with prior to putting it into play. Otherwise, litigation is sure to follow your success; others will attempt to claim your idea as your own. These cases offer us some guide as to how to avoid these types of law suits in the future.
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