French Author Claims 'Finding Nemo' Plagiarism By Disney

Reuters ^ | December 30, 2003 | Shiraz Sidhva

[xp38]

Not sure where it stands right now but there was a court case mentioned a while ago by the estate of Milne to reclaim the rights to Winnie the Pooh from Disney. If Disney loses that it could be a crippling blow. They derive a huge percentage of income from that franchise.

[bootless]

[grin]

[kaylar]

Reminds me of Harvey Comics suing Ghostbusters. I'll admit,when the Ghostbusters logo came up on the screen, I thought,"Oh, the studio got the rights to use Fatso of the Ghostly Trio" (The ghost behind the onscreen logo looks that much like the character, IMO.) But the judge disagreed and threw out the case, saying, "There's only so many ways you can draw a ghost".

[cake_crumb]

I do wildlife art. While I copyright my WORK, I do not, nor can I, copyright the animal in each picture.

[Old Professer]

I wrote a high school composition called The Littlest Christmas Tree in 1956; got an A and had to read it to the class.

The Higginbotham family, quite poor, bought the worst tree of all time- the entire story was narrated by the tree.

I was quite surprised years later to see the same thing on T.V.

[RebelBanker]

As much as I despise the Anti-American French, his version actually pre-dated Disney's by a few years..Le Calvez, a 33-year-old aquarium buff, said in an interview Monday that he registered Pierrot as a trademark with France's industrial protection and copyrights body in 1995.

Unfortunately for him, Pixar's fish is not named Pierrot and all clownfish look pretty similar. Also, they really do live in sea anemones, so that aspect belongs to another Creator as well.

[GalaxieFiveHundred]

Just keep suing, just keep suing...

[cake_crumb]

The story of the girl who wins a Christmas tree, but her father won't let her have it because his wife died on Christmas, so, in tears, she gives the tree to a very poor family who can't afford one?

[Pan_Yans Wife]

Reminds me of the movie, "A BUG'S LIFE" and "ANTS"... two studios made two different films, because of creative differences.

[leadhead]

It would be pretty hard to draw a cartoon clown fish that DIDN'T look just like Nemo.

You could draw one like Howie Dean.

[dware]

Pierrot Le Poisson Clown

"Finding Nemo" sounds better...

[VRWC_minion]

Just threaten to sue the Frenchman. He'll surrender.

[Old Professer]

Close; mine was based on the tree not being sold because it was so ugly, and everytime some family would come in the tree would plead silently for them to buy him and take him home with them so he could be like the other prettier trees; the Higginbothams were quite poor and the little girl finally cadged her father into buying the wretched thing because it was all they could afford.

But, magically, when they got the tree home and decorated it with string and ribbon and scraps of bright paper, the tree glowed with the light of a thousand stars, sorta dopey but I wrote it in a couple of hours and turned it in the next day, the deadline, of course.

[cake_crumb]

It sounds like a good story.

[Political Junkie Too]

It sounds like A Charlie Brown Christmas.

-PJ

[Brett66]

I though it was a dean campaign poster.......

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Copyright laws were written for the express purpose of seeing to it that Mickey Mouse never enters the public domain, therefore all copyrights belong to Disney, even the ones that don't.

[Terry Mross]

I was in a movie called DAZED AND CONFUSED. Universal said it's never made a profit but it's number 17 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the top 50 cult films of all time.

As for the "few sentences", you know more than I do but I assume it was a treatment. That's just as good as a script since the writer usually doesn't get writer's credit anyway.

[longtermmemmory]

copyright would have expired. Its public domain now.

[L.N. Smithee]

Pixar did the production, including story development. Disney just distributed it. Clownfish all look the same. BTW, no little fin on the one in the book.

Although I am not in the movie industry, I have had some discussions with folks at Pixar about film development (a company I was working for at the time had a contract with Pixar, HQ'ed in Emeryville, CA near Oakland). They didn't need to plagarize to conceive Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2 or Monsters, Inc. In fact, a case could be made that former Disney sub-honcho Jeffrey Katzenberg, who left in a huff and joined Steven Spielberg and David Geffen to form DreamWorks, may have appropriated thematic aspects of A Bug's Life for DreamWorks' Antz, which was completed and released before Bug's.

I remember the Kimba cartoons from my early childhood. They were one of many Japanese cartoons that were run on a UHF station that had a daily schedule heavy with kids' programming (anybody remember Prince Planet?) I believe that Lion King is a ripoff of Kimba; it's almost a slam dunk. But Pixar's run of success is unprecedented for a new studio. Every motion picture they've released has grossed over $200 million worldwide, and I doubt that they would have to resort to this.

I could turn out to be wrong, but I don't think I am.