All That Glitters.....

  Ah the process of making movie magic. What can I say there is nothing like it. The countless hours of battling writer’s block just to make one scene work. The joy of shooting on location in 90 plus degree heat and you’re only on day two of a 120-day shoot. It’s a labor of love that I wouldn’t trade for the world and yet you have to be wary.

  The film industry is ripe with battles over intellectual property. The movie The Expendables and Sylvester Stallone was able to “expend” (pun definitely intended) a recent lawsuit alleging that the movie was a rip off of another script titled The Cordoba Caper. The author claimed Stallone took the core of the story to shape his film. A judge however sided with Stallone’s camp that the two scripts shared similar stories but were not the same story.

  The same couldn’t be said for one of my favorite films Coming to America. The case that was brought against Paramount by Art Buchwald had some very interesting shockwaves in the aftermath of that case. Buchwald wrote a treatment about an African prince in an American ghetto. Paramount didn’t really move on the idea so he took it over to Warner Brothers. During that he found that Paramount moved forward with a movie titled Coming to America starring Eddie Murphy that was similar to his. It also had given a story by credit to Murphy. Buchwald sued Paramount and won. In the process it was exposed how studios were screwing producers and writers out of their cut from net profit deals.

  The last instance is not another case of plagiarism. This one is set in a galaxy far far away well not really. It does however deal with the iconic Storm Troopers from Star Wars. Andrew Ainsworth was the original designer of the Storm Trooper armor for Star Wars. He decided to make high quality replicas for cosplayers. Lucas heard about this and immediately filed suit claiming copyright infringement which he won suit in the U.S. however Ainsworth is in the U.K. and has no assets in the U.S. so the case moved over to U.K. courts in which Ainsworth won with the courts declaring that the Storm Trooper design is now public domain in the U.K.

  It’s important to take note of the lessons learned from these cases and cover your basis. Otherwise you could find yourself embroiled in one of these kinds of legal battles. That’s something I don’t want and will try to avoid like the plague.