Product names are a whole different issue than "copyright" or trademark more broadly considered. There are several problems with using real product names on TV, whether as props, in signage or in dialogue.:
1) Companies like to control their image. Budweiser probably does not want its beer being guzzled by a stagggering, half-naked Charlie Harper on
Three-and-a-Half Men.
2) Competitors don't like it when brand "A" is featured in the show their commercials for brand "B" is running on. That's why there is usually some "promotional consideration" involved in getting a real product on a show. Such placement is, in effect, an advertisement, so it actually levels the playing field if the company doing it pays a fee just like any other advertiser. And in some cases the deal includes only running ads for that brand during the commercial breaks. The old
FBI series on ABC TV was sponsored, in part, by a car company. (Let's say it was Ford, although my memory isn't really that good.
) Everybody in the show drove Ford or Lincoln-Mecury products, and no GM or Chrysler ads ran duing the show.
3) Whatever the case may have been in first-run broadcast, odds are nobody's still collecting promotional fees by the time a show hits home video or syndication, and nobody knows what competitor to a given product might be running ads on a local channel or in a local cable market, so it is easier all around to remove such references as there are.
Quote:
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She quoted a line from a Madonna song (I think it was "Like a Prayer") and it was cut from the DVD release (at least in Region 1).
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Song lyrics are no different than actual recordings when it comes to music rights. In fact, it is often whoever holds the publishing rights, not the recording artist or record label, who is the biggest stumbling block to music clearances. And composers and lyricists have equal rights (and equal vetoes) when it comes to the use of their songs. So the quotation may have been cleared for broadcast use, but not for DVD. More likely it
wasn't cleared for broadcast because somebody slipped up or thought there would be no problem if the lyric were
spoken, and they had to pay-up after the fact when they heard from the song-ower's lawyers. Then they either decided not to bother with the issue or balked at the price when it came time to clear the line for DVD. (The other possibility is that British copyright law is different than U.S. law in this respect, and there was no problem using the spoken line on the other side of The Pond, but would have been here.)
Regards,
Joe
