For those of you old enough to remember, the 60s-70s Carol Burnett show always closed with an animated version of Carol as a cleaning lady mopping the stage and scratching her behind, occassionaly stopping to read the credits as they scrolled by. The deliberate parody of this bit was used in a 2006 Family Guy episode and Burnett is suing over it.

AZCentral.com says:

A federal judge said he will dismiss Carol Burnett’s $2 million copyright infringement lawsuit over the use of her cleaning woman character in the animated series “Family Guy.”

U.S. District Judge Dean Pregerson said in a written tentative ruling Friday that he planned to dismiss the lawsuit against 20th Century Fox. He will issue a final ruling later.

The 74-year-old comedian sued the studio in March, contending that the Fox show didn’t have her permission to include her Charwoman character in an April 2006 episode.

Family Guy is RIPE with parody bits that pay tribute or mock all sorts of pop culture. How many other pop culture references have they made fun of on that show?

Each time these parodies are presented, they are done with “similar music” or “near likeness” of the character. We get the references but they are clearly not exact. However copyright does allow for the likeness to be used in Parody, so it is unlikely that this case would succeed right from the start.

Has Benny Hill returned from the grave to site infringement on Stewwie’s “Sexy Parties” scenes?

This list can go on forever.