RDF sues Fox alleging 'Wife Swap' "rip off"

RDF filed a lawsuit suing America's Fox TV network and production company Rocket Science Labs, claiming that they "ripped off" RDF's Wife Swap reality show to create Fox's Trading Spouses: Meet Your New Mommy.

The news comes a couple of months after Wife Swap creator Stephen Lambert said that he was considering launching legal action after Fox confirmed plans to air Trading Spouses two months before the American version of Wife Swap was due to premiere on the ABC network. At that point, Lambert said:

"You can't copyright an idea. It's all about assessing whether there are enough unique elements in a format for it to be copyrightable. In cases like this the judge will want to see the script, or whether the music for the programmes in question use the same notes."

In a press release issued late yesterday, Lambert in his capacity as RDF's director of programmes said:

"In our view, this is the most clear-cut case of copyright theft in the history of the reality genre. It has been widely reported that Fox has long pursued a strategy of ripping off other people's intellectual property. RDF intends to take full advantage of the law to put a stop to it."

RDF's lawsuit, filed on Tuesday, alleges that Peter Chernin, president and COO of Fox parent News Corp "told Fox executives in 2003 that he had seen the British version of "Wife Swap" during a visit to London and that 'it was the show everyone was talking about in the United Kingdom.'"

The suit then alleges that executives from Fox and Rocket Science Labs decided to copy Wife Swap's format "to confuse viewers and mislead them into watching Trading Spouses rather than Wife Swap US."

RDF says that Trading Spouses "has a premise and format virtually identical to those of "Wife Swap," including the cast of characters, the structure of each airing of a complete swap, the sequence of events, the plot, the tone, the theme, the pace, the scene set-ups, the narration, the dialogue that arises from constructed situations, the contrasting settings, the structured before-and-after dialogue, the topics explored, the dramatic and comedic effect created by music, the introductory segment, and even the opening graphics."

The company also says: "In both Wife Swap and Trading Spouses, two wives with contrasting values and lifestyles exchange spouses and families for a period of seven and ten days. During the first half of the trade, each wife must abide by the rules of the departing wife covering all aspects of household management, from chore delegation to budgeting, from food preparation to child discipline. During the second half of the trade, each wife imposes her own rules on her new household. At the end of the swap, the two wives meet for the first time and share what they have learned about themselves, their spouses, and each other during the swap."

The original UK version of Wife Swap airs on Channel 4. Fox has not issued a response at the time this article was published - stay with DS for all the latest developments.