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[bryant]

White Wolf is suing Sony Pictures over Underworld. Just thought you’d like to know. Anyone read the Nancy Collins story involved?

Comments

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

Its the Collins story that makes the difference, it is the only thing holding the suit togetehr from what I can see.

I'm waiting for next week when folks can get a hold of the papers filed in court to learn more.

[bryant]

Yeah. Key sentence from the press release: "Plaintiffs claim over 60 points of unique similarity between Underworld and their work." Someone knows what's required to prove plagarism.

Also, White Wolf is not completely inexperienced in this realm. They made Vince McMahon and the WWF cough up licensing fees when Vince debuted a vampiric character named Gangrel. Mind you, that one was kind of a slam dunk.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

"Unique similarity" is of course the key...certainly when I saw the trailer I thought, "Oh look, it's werewolves against vampires, where have I seen that before." But there's a big difference between "both this movie and their game have werewolves against vampires" and "this movie is stolen from their game."

I tend to agree that it may have to be the specific story and not just the world/setting that WW will need in order to prove plagiarism, and I am curious to know how this one ends up.

[multiplexer.livejournal.com]

They won't win, and I don't think it'll even get a hearing. If Hollywood got the country of Romania to cough up royalties to the name of Dracula, there's no way in hell a judge will even bother to hear this.