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Roger Dean sues over movie Avatar

Ar-Pharazon

Ar-Pharazon

Admiral
Admiral
Roger Dean is the brilliant artist behind dozens of album covers from Yes, Asia, Uriah Heep and more.

Roger believes the movie's look borrowed heavily from his body of artwork (ie: floating islands, stone arches, etc.)

Story

Along with a cash settlement and a public statement admitting he was the creator of imagery used in the film, Dean wants Fox to “cease and desist from any further reproduction, distribution, transmission or other use.”

If judgement is found in his favour, it means the original version of Avatar would have to be scrapped, and any sequels will look massively different from the production seen on release.
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With the way lawsuits go sometimes, he might just have a chance of winning this thing.
 
You can't copyright an artistic idea. Hence, floating mountains can't be copyrighted. Next...
 
Gaith said:
You can't copyright an artistic idea. Hence, floating mountains can't be copyrighted. Next...
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Why not try reading the document first? Parts 49 and 50 are particularly interesting. Apparently people in the production had stated that they were given Dean's work to base Avatar items and markings on.

ETA:
Entertainment Weekly reports that Cameron was asked in 2010 if he got the idea for floating mountains from a Yes album cover, and answered: “It might have been, back in my pot-smoking days.”
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One would have thought that Cameron would have learned his lesson by now.

Jan
 
Seems like it's more about the style of the images, rather than the content.

Someone with a lot more legal knowledge than myself would have to help out here. If the style looks too much like Dean's, maybe he has a case?

Funny that he waited 4 years to bring this up, though that guy claimed only a few years ago that he wrote the melody Men At Work used in the flute solo from Down Under. That was like, 25 years.
 
He gonna sue these guys too?

http://thebooksmugglers.com/2011/02...-the-floating-islands-by-rachel-neumeier.html

I'm not sure what it is, but guys seem to have gone a little sue-happy lately, what with this, and the class-action suit claiming millions in damages for the emotional trauma due to the fact that the Aliens:Colonial Marines footage from two years prior to the game's release was not in the actual game (I guess everyone should sue any studio that includes cut footage in their movie trailers huh?).
 
It's amazing how many people come out of the woodwork to sue for copyright infringement when a successfully and not terribly original movie comes out :lol:
 
Mr Light said:
It's amazing how many people come out of the woodwork to sue for copyright infringement when a successfully and not terribly original movie comes out :lol:
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After the millionth suit over Star Wars, George Lucas once said "No one ever sued me over Howard the Duck."
 
Jan said:
Apparently people in the production had stated that they were given Dean's work to base Avatar items and markings on.
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Even if true, so what? You can't copyright the idea of a floating island, and the Hallelujah Mountains were heavily enough inspired by actual mountains in China as to make any ripping off claim silly and completely baseless in legal terms at best.

Draculasaurus is right. All this guy's doing is making himself look like an asshole to anyone who might consider hiring him in the future.
 
I never heard about people suing Lucas for Star Wars! Who did that? Isaac Asimov? The creators of Flash Gordon? :p
 
EnderAKH said:
Mr Light said:
It's amazing how many people come out of the woodwork to sue for copyright infringement when a successfully and not terribly original movie comes out :lol:
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After the millionth suit over Star Wars, George Lucas once said "No one ever sued me over Howard the Duck."
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Why would they sue George? Howard is owned by Marvel Comics. Of course Disney did threaten Marvel with legal action over Howard. Now they're all one big happy "family".
 
Now N ow it is possible he hadn't seen anything to do with the film until now.

But I suspect you can't copyright floating islands as haven't they been used in fiction for decades? As for the look all you need to do is find pictures of a few real islands (Thailand perhaps) that look somewhat similar in style to the ones in Avatar.
 
If Dean can sue, then the guy who did this should also be able to sue Abrams/Paramount.

xf6rh4.jpg
 
JarodRussell said:
If Dean can sue, then the guy who did this should also be able to sue Abrams/Paramount.
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He can sue Paramount.

He'd lose of course, not least because that ship is Paramount's intellectual property to begin with, making that hypothetical case entirely different from the one being discussed here.
 
Gaith said:
Jan said:
Apparently people in the production had stated that they were given Dean's work to base Avatar items and markings on.
Click to expand...
Even if true, so what? You can't copyright the idea of a floating island, and the Hallelujah Mountains were heavily enough inspired by actual mountains in China as to make any ripping off claim silly and completely baseless in legal terms at best.
Click to expand...

Any idiot knows that you can't copyright an idea, only execution. That's what this is about - actual copying of multiple images/structures/markings and admission of same. Not an accident, not an homage, not a coincidence, willful wrongdoing. Something Cameron's done before and lost that lawsuit.

Jan
 
Floating islands have been used in fiction for as long as ever. This guy can bugger off, he was obviously inspired by something else, as avatar was inspired by multiple things. Obviously his day job isn't paying the bills any more. Nothing but greed. Plain and simple. I hope he the case gets kicked out.
 
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