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Stephen Colbert is having an identity crisis. During the Republican National Convention, Colbert revived his blowhard alter ego from “The Colbert Report” on his current CBS show. He also revived his old Comedy Central segment, "The Word," and the word was "Trumpiness."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqOTxl3Bsbw
It may come as some surprise that the people most offended by this segment were the lawyers for Comedy Central, which is owned by Viacom. Colbert has since announced that he is retiring the “Stephen Colbert” character because he could be sued for copyright infringement by Viacom.
Colbert's solution: create a new character who he called the "twin identical cousin" of "Stephen Colbert" — also named "Stephen Colbert."
To better understand this meta-mess, we rang up Eriq Gardner, senior editor at The Hollywood Reporter. He began with what the Viacom attorneys said to CBS.
They basically told the producers of the CBS show that the character from Comedy Central's "Colbert Report" was their intellectual property, which might sound a little strange. But when you work for a company, you hand over everything you create. Essentially what Comedy Central and Viacom are saying is that [character is] theirs to own.
But what Viacom is looking to protect isn't exactly clear. Their motivation likely isn't to recast the Colbert character or to profit from reruns or DVD sales. Gardner thinks it's just a preventative measure.
They might just be thinking this isn't just a Stephen Colbert issue. This could be an issue for the rest of their hosts and so they might want to set some precedence ... There's no way that they're really going to monetize "Stephen Colbert" going forward besides some clip archives.