The 10/3 live Raw debut on the USA Network was announced today as being extended for three hours. This was firing back at Spike TV, which was keeping the first run Ultimate Fighter episode at 11:05 p.m. that night hoping to draw not only the viewers from its own live special, but get the Raw viewers that were watching UF to switch back when the show ended.

Please God, no 50 minute HHH promo...

How in the FUCK can they fill three hours with Raw the way it's been? They were stretching for shit with the 10+ minute Venis/Viscera vs. Heat throbs match...

I'm seriously done watching WWE for awhile, me and my friends would much rather mark out and have a good time watching flipping piledrivers than watching Vince McMahon once again make a bad business decision by trying to eliminate the competition. First telling Kidman and the Dudleyz they can't use their OWN gimmicks, and now this. Fuck you.

Well, this oughta be great. Some of us would like HHH back, sooner, rather than later, you know.

Vince owns the rights to the gimmicks. He can do whatever he feels with them, no matter how evil it is.

If they used the gimmicks BEFORE they were in WWE, he doesn't necessarily own the rights. See: Warrior

Actually the Warrior legally changing his name to "Warrior" helped him more in his case than him owning the rights because he used it prior to the WWE.

Warrior didn't own the rights to "Ultimate Warrior." All he did was change his name to "Warrior" before he could do anything. And if Vince pays for the rights to something not already under copyright, he can have it fair and square. It's just evil.

Edit: Oops, beat me to it.

Actually, Warrior changed his name after the lawsuit. He won the lawsuit because he proved that he used the "Warrior" character (Dingo Warrior, etc.) and mannerisms (face paint, tassels) before he joined the then WWF. McMahon did get to keep the "Ultimate" part of the name, though.

With this precedent, the ECW guys could win a lawsuit if they had enough money to challenge McMahon in court

2 Words: Good. Luck. Even with money, I dare someone to take Vince to court.

See Also: Lesnar, Brock

See: Ventura, Jesse and the WWF.

Vince can be beaten in the courtroom. Especially when you have ground to stand on and precedent to back you up, like the Dudleyz would have. Brock lost because he had no ground whatsoever to stand on.

Ventura is 1 of the few exceptions. How many people can say they beat Vince in a court? Hell, it took years for the WWF to finally win their case against Vince, and they had plenty of money to back themselves up in court.

The thing is, I think the Warrior case has set the precedent. All the Dudleyz need to do is pop in an old ECW tape and they should be able to do the damn thing.

WWE came up with the camoflauge look, though. It didn't debut until the 2000 Royal Rumble (or a week or so before). Obviously the big deal is the name, and they technically should be allowed to use it, but I'm know lawyer.

Yea, the camo would prolly belong to the E, but that wouldn't be a big deal. Back to the tie-dye, which I always liked better anyways.

Like someone far cooler than I am once said, what's with the Bushwacker 2000 look? :D

You highly overrate how Vince and co. have faired in court. He's lost WAAAAAAAY more battles than he's ever won. Just look at how the Panda Fuckers have consistently raked him over the coals for the better part of the decade. He had to change his companies name because he lost so bad. There were even some horrible lawsuits against WCW that they eventually backed out of because they were so horrible. The only time Vince has ever really won a court case was against the government.

Vince lost cases he clearly shouldn't have tried, most specifically during the time frame where WCW was ass raping WWF in terms of quality and ratings.

Here's the deal about copyrighting names: I know this because I was in a band several years ago, and once we started seeing a little bit of success touring clubs across the country, somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 independent bands tried to sue us over the use of the name claiming they had it first. One band in Tampa, FL had actually obtained a copyright to it. Luckily, the indy label we were working for was under a bigger label who had a good legal staff working for them. We were found to be legally in the right, because there was no proof that we were using the name to capitilize off of their fame. In other words, if I started a band right now and called it "The Rolling Stones", obviously if I made any money with it it would have to go to the real Rolling Stones. However, if I would have named my daughter "Rolling Stone" Hamrick, there would have been nopthing they could have done about it.

So the question actually comes down to, if the Dudleyz used the name now, would they be trying to capitilize off of something Vince created? The answer is obviously "no". As stated before, they would only have to show an old ECW tape to prove that. Matt "Micheal Shane" Bentley would also be safe legally. The problem comes in because most any individual wrestler isn't gonna have the money to stay in court with a nationally traded company. Vince and his legal team know that. They know they don't have a legal leg to stand on, but they also know that court costs after appeals and all that bullcrap could run into 6 figures. Not to mention the months upto a year or more that it would take out of the wrestlers career. So who do you think could last the longest in that situation, a public company, traded on Wall Street, or Buh-buh Ray Dudley?

To sum it up, Vince is NOT in the right, and is just throwing his weight around because he has the money to screw people over.

I learned alot about copyright and trademark in a class last year, and have forgot most of it. Anyway, I think the difference between the Warrior case and the Dudley case would be that (at the time anyway) Vince didn't have any control over those previous entities (was it AWA?) where Warrior had used those "gimmicks" such as the tassles and facepaint and all that. However, Vince does now own the ECW name, tape library, most likely copyrights/gimmicks/tradmarks/intellectual property rights which might adversely affect the Dudleyz attempts, or thoughts at attempting something similiar as Warrior.

It doesn't matter. All Vince bought was the right to exclusively use that footage, not to have sole ownership of all those characters. Trust me, copyright on names just doesn't work the same - (and if I'm remembering correctly, it's actually trademark not copyright). Could Vince also sue New Jack since he owns all that footage?