CBS Drops Glass House Lawsuit

CBS has decided to drop their lawsuit against ABC, in which they accused the rival network of copying Big Brother too closely with their summer reality series The Glass House.

More details:

The Tiffany Network decided it was no longer worth suing ABC over The Glass House, seeing as how the series' ratings, which were never spectacular, have dropped to CW levels of patheticness, dropping as low as a .6 and getting beaten by reruns of the CBS show Hawaii Five-0 in its time slot.

Here's the CBS statement: "The viewers have spoken and delivered the ultimate form of justice against The Glass House. As a result, we filed in federal court this morning a voluntary dismissal without prejudice of our claims against ABC. The contract and trade secrets claims against former Big Brother producers for violating their confidentiality agreements will continue separately in arbitration. We reserve the right to re-file this claim against ABC/The Glass House, or any other entity, that goes to such shocking lengths to duplicate our copyright material."

I liked The Glass House well enough to watch the first several episodes, but not well enough to pick back up watching it after taking a two week break for the Olympics.  If it got renewed I would probably watch it again, but that isn't looking very likely.  I always thought CBS' accusations of copyright violation were a little over the top, but it sounds like the whole thing might have been more about a feud with departing producers, than the actual similarity of The Glass House to Big Brother.

From THR:

CBS has dismissed its lawsuit against ABC over the reality show Glass House. The Big Brother network claims its copycat suit is unnecessary because the ABC show is a flop. But the case isn't over: The network said Friday that claims against the show's producers will continue in arbitration.

photo credit: abc.com