Damon Pourshain is an animator in Ontario, Canada, who has filed a copyright claim against Disney over “Inside Out.” The lawsuit asks that Pourshian be recognized as the copyright holder of the screenplay, live production, and short film that is the source material for “Inside Out.” Pourshain’s highly successful student film has striking similarities with the blockbuster hit, such things as “eating cereal from a yellow carton, a teacher asking a question that puts the protagonist on the spot, eating lunch alone, and getting a kiss from mother at night. Both movies even include a mock commercial that highlights advertising’s power over this five-person control room.” These parallels are found in the title, macro themes, and scene-by-scene events. And now, a judge has allowed the case to move forward and ordered Pixar to pay Pourshain’s legal fees.
“It is clear that the Infringing Work (the Pixar movie) reproduces the inventive and central concept at the heart of the Original Works: the behavior and actions of the main “external” character, a school-age child, are controlled by five “internal” characters who work together and struggle against one another to help the external character navigate his or her daily life,” reads the statement of claim.
Pourshian’s lawsuit initially named the Walt Disney Company, Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar, Disney Enterprises, Disney Shopping, Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, Disney Consumer Products, and Interactive Media, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, and American Broadcasting Company, which distributes Pixar films on television.
– Excerpt from an article for National Post by Joseph Brean. Read the full article here.
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