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Uphill Battle in Infringement Suits Against Studios
A paunchy panda with a taste for Chinese food and a dream of becoming a kung fu master walks into the restaurant where he works as a waiter. There, he meets up with his martial arts mentor, a small red panda wielding chopsticks as weapons. Soon, backed by five kung fu'fighting friends ' a crane, a mantis, a monkey, a snake and a tiger ' the panda is training to battle an evil animal antagonist to save the “Valley of Peace.”
Sounds familiar, right? Of course. It's the story of Po, the star of DreamWorks Animation's 2008 animated hit Kung Fu Panda, which grossed more than $630 million in box office sales worldwide and $100 million in DVD sales, and spawned a popular video game, an online virtual world and a potential blockbuster sequel set for release on May 26.
Actually, the story described above comes from the Kung Fu Panda Power Works collection created by illustrator Jayme Gordon and registered with the U.S. Copyright Office in 2000. The resemblance between the two panda tales is at the heart of a copyright infringement suit filed against DreamWorks this year in federal district court in Boston by Gordon, represented by Fish & Richardson and Duane Morris. Gordon v. Dreamworks Animation SKG Inc., 1:11-cv-10255. As it happens, Gordon is just one of two artists suing the studio for copying the Kung Fu Panda character and concept. And while history shows that plaintiffs taking on Hollywood with such claims rarely succeed in court, at least some copyright experts believe that Gordon may be an exception.
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