Judge Rules Against Bill Nye in Lawsuit Over Disney Streaming Dispute

Bill Nye recent took Disney to court over the use of his likeness on shows available for streaming and downloading.  However, a judge ruled against NYE saying that these services do fall under the agreement with Walt Disney Company subsidiary Buena Vista Television.  This paves the way for episodes of Bill Nye the Science Guy to screen on Disney+. 

The ruling came from Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Cowan who found in favor of Buena Vista.  The judge heard testimony in a lengthy pretrial hearing in December which focused on interpretation of the 1993 contract that Nye signed with Disney.  The ruling was made on February 2nd. 

Photo: Chesnot/Getty Images

The judge cited several reasons for his decision including that both parties, should be entitled to rely on an agreement that is intended to govern a future use even if the future use is not specifically identified.” What this essentially means now is that the jury in the case WILL NOT be asked to determine whether streaming or downloading services are video devices. 

There is expected to be a separate trial on Nye’s accounting claims. A trial-setting conference is scheduled April 12. 

Nye, 65, filed the lawsuit in August 2017, maintaining BVT engaged in questionable accounting and cheated him out of profits from his show. The television series originally ran from 1992 to 1997 on PBS, and is still streamed on services such as Netflix.

In his written final argument to Cowan, Nye lawyer A. Raymond Hamrick III stated that his client believed at the time that video devices applied only to video cassettes and laser discs — both of which were manufactured and dissimilar to delivery systems such as Netflix and iTunes.

But defense attorney Lucia E. Coyoca argued in her court papers that a video device is broadly defined to include any device “embodying the series” that is similar to traditional physical home video. She further maintained the process involved in creating and delivering the digital file in conformance with the technical specifications of each of the platforms that license the series establishes that they are in fact manufactured.