| "Apprentice" Suit Fired Off
EOnline.com
Looks like the boardroom won't be hitting the courtroom after all.
The producers of The Apprentice have settled a lawsuit with the man who accused Donald Trump, Mark Burnett and NBC Universal of stealing the idea for the reality competition from a similarly-themed show he pitched the producers in 2001.
Mark Bethea's lawyer, Ronald Makarem, confirmed to the Associated Press that both the state and federal lawsuits, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court and the U.S. District Court, have been settled out of court, but refused to disclose the terms of the likely sizable settlement.
Bethea had filed suit against the reality kingpins for allegedly ripping off his concept for a reality show called C.E.O., which included contestants competing against each other in an office environment and even pegged Trump as the host.
"In the summer of 2001, he pitched his original idea to defendants...[who] stole Bethea's expression of thought and called it The Apprentice," the complaint read.
Bethea claimed that he registered his concept for C.E.O. with the Writer's Guild of America in August 2000 and a year later, he teamed up with Velocity Entertainment Group and approached Burnett and his producing partner Conrad Riggs with the pitch.
In June of 2001, Bethea claims the duo behind Survivor rejected his pitch, only to announce the birth of The Apprentice in 2003.
For his part, Burnett responded to the federal lawsuit last spring, claiming he came up with the idea for the Trump-led reality show while shooting Survivor: Amazon in late 2002.
But Bethea quickly called foul on the fluke defense.
"The number of similarities between C.E.O. and The Apprentice is impossible to attribute to coincidence," he said in his original suit.
"Mark Burnett and Conrad Riggs unscrupulously lifted Mark Bethea's C.E.O. idea and incorporated its signature elements into The Apprentice without giving Bethea any credit or compensation for his originality," lawyer Browne Greene said shortly after filing the state suit.
"Although Burnett and Riggs are the current darlings of the reality television genre, they are not above the law. Our job is to put an end to their bullying and intimidation tactics and to see to it that Mark Bethea has his day in court."
Bethea originally sued the TV trifecta for monetary damages to cover the alleged Apprentice-jacking as well as cover past, present and future economic losses.
Which could be sizable.
Per Bethea's complaint, The Apprentice's first season alone generated an excess profit of $100 million. The series wraps up its fifth season June 5.
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