Seven has lost its legal bid to stop the broadcast of Nine’s new cooking show, The Hotplate, which the network alleges is a copy of its six-year-old reality TV format My Kitchen Rules.
On Thursday afternoon Justice Nicholas of the federal court dismissed Seven’s application for interlocutory relief which would have forced Nine to pull the remaining episodes off air.
“In my opinion, the balance of the risk of doing an injustice by either granting or withholding the interlocutory relief sought by Seven weighs in Nine’s favour,” he said.
After just one episode of The Hotplate had broadcast, Seven accused Nine of stealing the original format which regularly attracts 2.4 million viewers across the country.
The Hotplate, a show about “unsung local restaurant heroes” competing for a $100,000 prize, has been an instant hit, attracting 1 million viewers this week.
Seven has vowed to continue its legal action all the way to a full trial to protect the My Kitchen Rules format. “Given the importance of the matter, Seven has asked the court to deal with the matter as an urgent hearing,” a spokesman said.
“My Kitchen Rules is the No 1 show in Australia. It is also broadcast in 162 countries. There are local versions of MKR being produced under licence in seven international markets very successfully, including Canada, Lithuania, UK, Serbia, New Zealand, Belgium and Denmark.”
A Nine spokesperson said: “We are pleased with the court’s decision today regarding The Hotplate and look forward to continuing this hit series on Nine.”
Justice Nicholas said Seven’s commercial arrangements with other producers and broadcasters were unlikely to suffer as a result of his decision and Seven may vindicate its rights in a full court case.
He said he had watched several episodes of My Kitchen Rules and the first three episodes of Hotplate and he believed the use of “professional restaurateurs” in the Nine show made the dramatic effect of the Nine program “arguably different” from MKR which used amateur chefs.
“The fact that the contestants in Hotplate are restaurateurs (many of whom are highly experienced professionals) is a circumstance around which much of the dialogue is constructed,” he said.
“Nevertheless, this difference aside, the format of the two programs seem to me to be very similar, and each of the ‘key elements’ referred to by [Seven executive] Mr [Brad] Lyons seems to be common to both formats.”
Justice Nicholas accepted Nine’s argument that many elements of My Kitchen Rules were to be found in other cooking shows – including Come Dine with Me, Masterchef and TheChopping Block – and in other non-food reality shows such as The Block, The Biggest Loser and The Farmer Wants a Wife.
“Nine relied on this evidence to show that the MKR format is largely derived from unoriginal material,” he said. “To reproduce in a material form elements of a dramatic work which are in themselves not original will not normally constitute an infringement of copyright because what has been taken will not be a substantial part of the copyright work.”
However, Seven has a “reasonably arguable case” that the formats of MKR and Hotplate were very similar and might have been copied, he said.
