History Main / ClumsyCopyrightCensorship

* ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure'' features many references to American and British musicians in the form of both character names and [[PsychicPowers Stand abilities]], which creates a problems for dubs in places where the producers would get sued into oblivion for it. Early adaptations simply transliterated names differently like [[Music/MariahCarey Mahrahia]], [[Music/TheJGeilsBand J. Gail]], and [[Music/{{Devo}} D'Bo]]. The more complete English language releases post-2012 instead go for similarly sounding or similarly themed names, particularly for Stands. Sometimes this actually works out well, like turning [[Music/PinkFloyd Crazy Diamond]] into "Shining Diamond" (preserving the [[Music/WishYouWereHere "Shine On You Crazy Diamond"]] nod), or [[Music/FreddieMercury Made in Heaven]] to "[[{{Pun}} Maiden]] Heaven", but more often than not it just gives audiences both new and old instant classics like [[Music/GreenDay Green Tea]], [[Music/BadCompany Worse Company]], and [[Music/LimpBizkit Flaccid Pancake]].

* Internet radio station SomaFM had to change the logo of its Underground [[TheEighties 80s]] channel due to trademark infringement. The logo in question was a parody of the London Underground logo, which is trademarked in the US for some reason. The station is based in San Francisco. A [[http://twitter.com/somafm/status/380881748952760320 proposed new logo]] tries to skirt it by changing the circle (which is explicitly stated in the trademark) to a rounded square, though for now the logo is just "Underground Eighties" in AllLowercaseLetters and a light green font.

* ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken'' Season 1 DVD had the sketch with WesternAnimation/BeavisAndButtHead joining the WesternAnimation/TeenTitans removed from the episode due to legal issues. The resulting episode ended up suspiciously short. Syndication and international airings, as well as Hulu kept the sketch intact. Most fans agree that this is an odd case for a show that has been known to treat the concept of fair use as a mere suggestion.

* Music/SufjanStevens' album ''Illinois'' (aka ''Come On, Feel the Illinoise!'') initially had cover artwork with Franchise/{{Superman}} flying through the sky in the background. Shortly after releasing the album, the record label realized they never got permission from Creator/DCComics to use Superman's likeness. To prevent a lawsuit, they took every copy that hadn't been sold yet and slapped a sticker of three balloons over the Man of Steel. Later reprintings of ''Illinois'' were less clumsy, and edited the cover art itself to replace Supes with either empty sky or the three balloons.

* The ComicBook/IncredibleHulk comic book collection ''Regression'' includes issue 296, which had a guest appearance by Rom, a character based on a Parker Brothers toy. Since Marvel no longer has the rights to Rom, the pages on which he appears aren't reprinted, and instead there's a text summary which refers only to a "heroic alien cyborg".

* A rare non-copyright version of this trope occurs in ''Film/BattleBeyondTheSun''; jittery travelling mattes were added to the [[CutAndPasteTranslation American version ]] in an (unsuccessful) attempt to censor Soviet iconography and Russian lettering on spaceships.

* All modern-day re-releases of ''VideoGame/CrazyTaxi'' renamed licensed eateries. For example, KFC was renamed to FCS (Fried Chicken Shack), and Pizza Hut is simply a "Pizza place". Not only were the names of the eateries changed, but the soundtracks were completely replaced as well, so no more Music/{{Offspring}} or Music/BadReligion for you.

* ''Film/PhantomOfTheParadise'' is a rather unfortunate case. Antagonist Swan's record label, [[PunBasedTitle Swan Song]], was featured in many scenes, including long shots and panning shots. At about the same time they were filming, Music/LedZeppelin manager Peter Grant started a ''real'' [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swan_Song_Records record label]] with the name, and beat Phantom by a couple months with their first album release. Grant threatened to block release of the film, so [[Creator/BrianDePalma dePalma]] and his editor ''very poorly'' covered up the offending words with the new label name, Death Records. Even worse, several long take scenes with too much movement were reedited so as to not show the original name, wasting the long single take shots. That name was '''everywhere.''' [[http://www.swanarchives.org/Production_Fiasco.asp Luckily, the original takes survive in the hands of a fan]], and was shown in a special feature on Shout Factory's blu-ray release.

* Used InUniverse for laughs in the ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZim'' episode "Door to Door". The children are forced into selling candy bars to fundraise for the school, with one of the prices for selling candies being what is very obviously a box of Band-Aids... But since Band-Aids are trademarked, whenever someone in the promotion film for the fundraiser says "Band-Aids" they're overdubbed by a completely different voice saying "Adhesive medical strips". Later, Miss Bitters gets overdubbed by the same voice when one of the children sells enough candies to win one.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' episode "Specs And The City" reuses a StationIdent animation created for Creator/Channel4 of Homer trying to grab beer hanging up from an power line, repeatedly causing power surges across Springfield - it then pans upward to a skyline view to show the surges appearing in the shape of a "4". In the episode where this appears, the final shot is awkwardly changed to try and remove the 4, but it's still possible to make it out.

* Used InUniverse for laughs in the ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZim'' episode "Door to Door". The children are forced into selling candy bars to fundraise for the skool, with one of the prices for selling candies being what is very obviously a box of Band-Aids... But since Band-Aids are trademarked, whenever someone in the promotion film for the fundraiser says "Band-Aids" they're overdubbed by a completely different voice saying "Adhesive medical strips". Later, Miss Bitters gets overdubbed by the same voice when one of the children sells enough candies to win one.

* IDW's original reprints of ''ComicBook/TheTransformersMarvel'' suffered from this big-time. Because of some references the Marvel universe (ComicBook/SpiderMan himself guest stars in one issue) the company could not reprint certain issues of the original series and instead were forced to use short summaries of the cut issues instead. This especially hit hard with the recurring character Circuit Breaker (while she was a character created for the comic, Marvel secured the rights to her by including a cameo by her in ''ComicBook/SecretWarsII'' before her proper debut in the ''Transformers'' comic): because of this, any issue that featured her was cut. Considering she played a huge role in the final arc of the book, lord knows how IDW would have been able to handle collecting that. Thankfully, IDW was eventually able to work out a deal with Marvel that enabled them to reprint the comics a second time, this time with the issues that featured Spider-Man and Circuit Breaker completely intact.\\\

** Averted when the show used to be on Britbox which used the original version of the episode, with the "Tony of Plymouth (Sword Fight)" sketch left untouched.

** This is mostly adverted on Britbox due to older prints being used.

* Music/{{Megadeth}} has covered Nancy Sinatra's hit "These Boots Are Made for Walkin" for their first album with slightly altered (more vulgar) lyrics. Ten years later the original lyrics' author, Lee Hazlewood, complained about the version being "vile and offensive" and demanded it being pulled from future reissues. The remastered 2002 version of the album included the song with all modified parts from original lyrics bleeped (and a [[Main/TakeThat Take That!]] from Dave Mustaine in album's booklet, where he explained they decided to have some fun with the song because the original one sucked and called out Hazlewood on cashing those royalty checks he received for ten years before airing his grievances). "The Final Kill" remaster released in 2018 contains a re-recorded version of the song with Hazlewood original lyrics intact.

** ''VideoGame/DiddyKongRacing'' had a remake for the Nintendo DS in 2007, in it, Banjo and [[{{VideoGame/ConkersBadFurDay}} Conker]] were removed and replaced by Dixie Kong and Tiny Kong, the fact that Conker originally was meant for a cute and cuddly videogame that eventually changed into a gross and violent game also helps.

** ''[[{{VideoGame/ConkersBadFurDay}} Conker's Bad Fur Day]]'' had a port for Xbox One in the ''Rare Replay'' complilation, some changes:

** ''Short Circuit 1 & 2'' dubbed the use of the Bee Gees' "More than a Woman" in the first film with Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get it On". In the 2015 reupload, the song was muted, resulting in the audio quality noticably taking a drop until the 15:13 mark in the video.

* The International Olympic Committee has taken an increasingly aggressive line when enforcing its trademarks in recent years, to the point where some London hotels found themselves served with a cease-and-desist for even mentioning the words "Olympic Games" in their advertising in the run-up to the 2012 Games. Any ProductPlacement that the Committee hasn't been paid for is also verboten, to the point where Games staff were actually sent into each venue's bathrooms to tape over the maker's marks on the sinks and toilets.

* While most episodes of ''WesternAnimation/KimPossible'' are available on [=iTunes=], several are not, most likely due to issues with music rights. For example, "The Golden Years" has Nikki Cleary performing "Summertime Guys", while "Queen Bebe" has an animated version of Music/SmashMouth playing "Come On Come On".

* Some of the [=BBC=]-era episodes of ''Series/TheGoodies'' on DVD, even on the 2018 complete series DVD release, had to receive edits to replace some imagery and music with substitutes due to copyright concerns, even going as far as replacing Music/TheBeatles song "She Loves You" with a cover version for "Goodies Rule - OK?".

* Some of the "[=BBC=]-era episodes of ''Series/TheGoodies'' on DVD, even on the 2018 complete series DVD release, had to receive edits to replace some imagery and music with substitutes due to copyright concerns, even going as far as replacing Music/TheBeatles song "She Loves You" with a cover version for "Goodies Rule - OK?".

* Old syndication version of ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' episode Recap/FuturamaS3E3ATaleOfTwoSantas (as shown on Adult Swim, for example) had a small one during the scene when Bender tries to convince a family he is a good Robot Santa and says "But I come bearing Tri-ominos!" while holding a Tri-ominos box. Yet in closed captioning it says TabletopGame/{{Stratego}}. It was fixed in DVD release, and in subsequent closed captioning for streaming services.

* After MTV announced that ''WesternAnimation/{{Daria}}'' would come to DVD in 2010, fans expected that most, if not all, of the licensed music would be replaced, since previous releases of the movies had all the music altered (though not as clumsily as was done for other examples on this page.) MTV supposedly respects the show and repeatedly assured the fans that they were going to great lengths to avoid clumsiness. However, after the official release, fans reported that some replacements have proven clumsy anyway. One particular instance that might prove noticeable even to new and casual fans concerns an homage to the music video for Music/{{REM}}'s "Everybody Hurts" in the episode "Road Worrier", which has completely different-sounding music in the current print. The N and Logo also showed episodes different music, though despite their heavy censorship of the show The N retained more of the original songs than the [=DVDs=], Logo, and later MTV airings do.

* In ''Le Ton beau de Marot'', a book by Creator/DouglasHofstadter, a passage from a British release of ''Literature/TheCatcherInTheRye'' (which rewrote the whole book into British English) is replaced by a message from the author complaining that Salinger is too strict about copyright, and that Hofstadter had to scramble to maintain something the size of the quote to avoid throwing off the typesetting.

* Later reruns of ''Series/LizzieMcGuire'' (both on WGN and the 2010 Disney Channel reairings) had their songs replaced with generic background music for some reason...

* The US single version of S'Express's sample-heavy "Theme From S'Express" replaces many of the samples with the band's own vocals, likely due to Capitol Records being unable to get clearance for said samples.