Legality of "Based on" Characters

May 14, 19961 post by 1 poster
Question
1 post
K. Patrick

Hola,

Could somebody explain why it is not illegal to build characters on real life people: i.e., Soup Nazi, Kramer, etc? Most movies usually note that all of the characters are fictional, yada, yada, yada. Does a sitcom have different rules? Is this considered parody, and thus excluded? Or, was some type of waver secured?

Thanks,

Kevin