That’s what you get when you have lawyers on retainer with nothing to do. They look for someone to sue to make money. Every time the lawyers write a letter they also write a bill for services.
At some point I would have thought, heads of creative or marketing would be going, "so what's our customer base saying about us lately? Oh, everyone's angry because of something our lawyers did, maybe I should look into that before we lose more valued fans."
Is there some enshrined rule somewhere that says, "Lawyers get to burn the house down, if they're doing it there's probably some complicated legal reason. Ho hum."
Are people like John Van Citters the apparent "CBS Vice President for Product Development" holding vanity positions that have no real power in the company so the organisation doesn't feel the need to back any statements they make?
Or is it just that fans need to learn the lesson, "feel free to enjoy what we give you, just not enough to make anything too much like it, or we'll hit you with a lawyer"?