This article first appeared in Entertainment Law Matters, a Frankfurt Kurnit legal blog.

- John Grisham's The Firm in a real-life legal drama. CBS filed a lawsuit against one of its writers, Lucas Reiter, claiming he illegally re-sold to NBC a 2008 TV series pilot script based on John Grisham's legal thriller The Firm. Reiter is a freelance writer who has also authored episodes of legal drama series Boston Legal and The Practice. In its complaint, CBS claims it paid Reiter $250,000 for the exclusive rights to the script, but the writer licensed a "cut-and-paste" version of it to NBC for its upcoming series The Firm, with identical dialogue, plot details, and even camera direction: "[Reiter] expressly acknowledged CBS's rights to this material and went so far as to ask CBS's permission to take the project elsewhere." CBS is suing the writer for breach of contract and tortious interference with contract. NBC's upcoming series is scheduled to premiere later this year and it is rumored to pick up where the 1993 film The Firm, starring Tom Cruise, left off.

- Accused ChrisFarley.com cybersquatter keeps domain name. A National Arbitration Forum arbitrator has denied an anti-cybersquatting complaint that was brought against the current owner of the chrisfarley.com domain name. Make Him Smile, Inc. claimed that after the actor's tragic death in 1997, his family transferred all of its intellectual property rights to it, including the "Chris Farley" mark. In its complaint, Make Him Smile, Inc. accused the Bahamas-based owner of chrisfarley.com of registering the domain name in "bad faith" – to commercially exploit the comedian's celebrity by redirecting internet traffic to unrelated commercial websites. The arbitrator agreed that Chris Farley would have had common law rights to use the "Chris Farley" mark, but that Make Him Smile, Inc. did not establish that Farley's family transferred the rights to it or that its use was sufficient to establish common law rights. Farley is best remembered for his roles on Saturday Night Live and Tommy Boy.

- Happy Days cast not appeased by modest checks for multimillion dollar lawsuit. Lawyers for the four Happy Days cast members, who are suing CBS for over $10 million in unpaid royalties, reported that the actors have received checks between $6,000 and $6,500 each as "payment in full" from the network. The iconic sitcom's cast filed a lawsuit in April seeking a cut of the network's revenue from licensing the actors' videos, images and voices for merchandise ranging from slot machines to lunch boxes. "In our view the checks were issued as a PR move so that CBS could say, 'We paid the actors something,'" the cast's attorney Jon Pfeiffer said, "The checks will have no impact on the cast's resolve to obtain what they feel is owed to them, and will continue to pursue their case."

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