LALATE EXCLUSIVE
Howard Stern Anna Nicole Smith Celebrities Strike Back v.
Ashton Kutcher Pop Fiction

While no public statement has been yet by Anna Nicole Smith’s camp, or from Howard K Stern, the net is a buzz over alleged claims that Ashton Kutcher’s new E! Reality Show Pop Fiction is based upon a concept by Anna Nicole Smith and Howard K Stern pitched to the Network while Smith was alive and allegedly repitched recently by Stern with Larry Birkheart.

Did E! Networks or Ashton Kutcher do anything legally wrong?

Based upon the facts available publically so far, LALATE legal analysis can tell you that E! did nothing wrong whatsoever.

Apparently Anna Nicole registered with the Writers Guild in 2004 a treatment. Big problem.

1. Treatments are not protectable under the U.S. Copryight Act. Concepts, treatments, premises, outlines, story ideas, series are not protectable. If this is all that was authored by Stern / Smith, they have no basis for a copyright claim against the program. Morevoer, if they pursue a copyright claim and do not prevail here in a Los Angeles Federal Court, they prevailing defendant could be entitled to all their attorneys fees.

2. If Stern / Smith had filed this “treatment” with the US Copyright Act, it would have been mailed right back to them as not sufficient. The US Copyright Office will not register treatments since they do not qualify for registration nor protection. The treatment unto itself is sparse. To even call it even a treatment is a stretch because the total composition is less than 2 pages.

3. Despite what some authors may believe, the registering of a work at the Writers Guild of America affords you no protections whatsoever except to establish that the work existed at that time (which you don’t need the WGA for). A WGA registration affords you no protections for your work under the US Copyright Act and is not a replacement for registering the work with the US Copyright Office.

Today E! Networks issued a reported statement:

“Pop Fiction is a program independently created and developed by Ashton Kutcher’s company, Katalyst. Pop Fiction is not based on any idea or concept that may have been pitched to E! by any other party.”

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G. Ben Thompson, former companion of Anna Nicole Smith, testified Wednesday in a Bahamas courtroom that Howard K. Stern took photographs of the collapsed body of Smith’s son for profit, reports AP today.

According to AP, Thompson testified “that Stern took about four pictures of Daniel Smith’s body after he died Sept. 10, 2006, while visiting his celebrity mother three days after she gave birth to her daughter in a Bahamian hospital. Stern said the photographs “might be worth some money one day” “

“I was totally shocked he was taking pictures of a dead child laying in that bed,” Thompson testified Wednesday at the inquest into Smith’s death while being questioned by the attorney for Smith’s mother, Virgie Arthur.