Arbitration board assesses theft of ideas from TV formats
If two television stations or producers are in dispute over an idea, they can now appeal to a mediation body. The Arbitration and Mediation Body for Idea Theft will be based at WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization, in Geneva.
This was agreed between Wipo and the international format protection organization Frapa, to which more than 100 production companies belong. Not only the theft of ideas, but also increasingly complex contractual models require the intervention of neutral arbitrators more and more frequently, said Frapa President Ute Biernat. As an example, the German cited the dispute between the production company Fremantle and the Swiss broadcaster 3+ over the series "Bauer ledig sucht". Fremantle accuses the private broadcaster of having copied the RTL ratings hit "Bauer sucht Frau". For its part, broadcaster 3+ refers to the fact that Swiss television station SF had already previously had a similar format in its program, which Fremantle had in turn used.
