Multiple Lawsuits From Multiple People Who All Say They Came Up With Kung Fu Panda
from the ideas-vs.-execution dept
We'd heard a while back a guy named Terence Dunn who had sued Dreamworks, claiming that he had come up with the concept of "Kung Fu Panda," which Dreamworks made into a massively successful film. We hadn't written about it at the time, because for pretty much every big successful film or book, someone comes out of the woodwork to claim some sort of ownership stake. However, now we've got a second such lawsuit. THREsq reports on a guy named Jayme Gordon, who actually seems to have a somewhat stronger claim, in that he actually created a project, registered with the US Copyright Office, called "Kung Fu Panda Power" whose characters have some similarities to the movie's characters. Assuming the drawings in that article are accurate, it would seem that he has a much stronger claim that the usual "that movie took my idea!" claim.Still, there are two things to consider. Is the idea of a Panda that does Kung Fu really so original? After all, there seem to be multiple people who came up with it, and it seems like a pretty straightforward thought process. As a commenter on the linked article above notes:
Combining Kung Fu and a Panda is not a terribly difficult idea to come up with. You say you want a Kung Fu movie, but with animals? Okay, where does Kung Fu come from? China? Oh, okay. Well, what kinda animals live in China? Well, there's the Panda, of course. Bingo. Let's make it.And, the second point is one we've pointed out before: there's a big difference between an idea and executing on the idea. Just having a general idea that many others might have as well shouldn't give you the right to step in and collect some of the profits from those who actually took the risk and executed successfully on the idea.
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Filed Under: execution, idea, kung fu panda
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Response to: Rabbit80 on Feb 21st, 2011 @ 6:41am
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Re: Response to: Rabbit80 on Feb 21st, 2011 @ 6:41am
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Re: Response to: Rabbit80 on Feb 21st, 2011 @ 6:41am
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I've got a great idea
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Re: I've got a great idea
I've got a great idea for a movie. It's got people in it. Therefore, if I see a movie and there's a person in it, then that studio stole my idea! They owe me money!
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Kung Fu Anime
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Re: Kung Fu Anime
The concept of any anthropomorphic "combat" animal is hardly original - Ninja Turtles to name but one - I wouldn't see it as original to apply it to yet another animal whether that particular animal had been done before or not.
Even the concept of a bunch of different such animals together is hardly unique (I could probably claim rights myself from stories developed in TMNT RPG from a mis-spent youth!) so for me it'd have to be pretty much a very close rip-off of a specific story he'd done about those specific animals for me to do much more than laugh at him.
On the other hand I'm not a copyright lawyer so no doubt there's good money to be made arguing about it.....
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Re: Re: Kung Fu Anime
It is easy to dismiss anything as "obvious". Heck, Star Wars is obvious (good and bad, right and wrong, temptation, space ships, funny aliens) if you want to go down that level.
The overall concept (animals doing non-animal things) isn't narrow enough for a copyright. But a Panda, doing Kung Fu, with a smaller buddy... that is a pretty narrow field.
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Re: Re: Re: Kung Fu Anime
As for the "smaller buddy", he was actually a teacher but either way, "inept student and wise sensei" or "buddies who hate each other but love each other in the end" are hardly original plot devices. Not saying he doesn't have something as I don't know what story he claims to have, just saying for me it'd have to be a lot more specific than "It's got a panda and some others in" or any other combination of 2 or 3 general factors.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Kung Fu Anime
You have your "farm boy with a destiny" (Luke), a pirate (Han), a princess (Leia), good and evil wizards (Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader), and fantastic creatures (Chewie, the cantina patrons, droids et al). I'm sure there are other parallels that I'm not thinking of off the top of my head (the Emperor as "evil king", perhaps)?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Kung Fu Anime
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage
Warning: clicking on that link may cause you to lose hourse of time
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Kung Fu Anime
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Kung Fu Anime
Remember, it isn't a question of if the idea is "obvious" here, the question is "did this guy come up with it first, and did he show it to the executives who ended up using the idea?"
For your amusement, consider this Kevin Smith clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgYhLIThTvk
You have to listen to the whole bit, because the punch line comes in the last 10 seconds.
Ideas.
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Re: Kung Fu Anime
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Tekken has been doing is since 1998
http://tekken.wikia.com/wiki/Panda
This game came out in April of 1998.
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This is theft! And murder! And genocide!
Anyone who disagrees is simply a denier, and should be ashamed of himself.
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Apparently the following image comes from that doc:
http://jonathanturley.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/kung_fu_pandas.jpg
Striking similarity, tbh, though perhaps it only shows how incredibly unoriginal both Disney and this guy are (who imo can't even draw).
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No such thing!
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Then there's the point that a lot of chinese martial art styles are named after actual animals. In fact, the same animals of the movie, so it's not terribly difficult to come up with the idea that a real animal should play the part of a martial artist that specialises in each of these styles.
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Panderan in Warcraft
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I disagree
This guy apparently did try to execute the idea, but Disney and Dreamworks wouldn't work with him. So "Kung fu Panda Power" wasn't produced due to a lack ambition, but a lack of resources.
There are too many connections between Gordon and Eisner and Katzenberg to brush this off as a coincidence.
This about it this way; 'Jeff' pitch a story idea to DW, they decline, and 2 years later, they produce a movie similar to your idea. So, by Mike's argument, since Jeff didn't execute on his idea whereas DW did, he has no leg to stand on.
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Re: I disagree
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"I loved that movie, but it didn't age very well."
"Well, how DO you make sure something ages well?"
"You... disconnect it from the cultural elements that may be transient."
"Ok, so clothing styles, hairstyles, architecture, slang, and so on. How do we do that?"
"Anthropomorphic animals in ancient china?"
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Yep, it's original!
Need I say more?
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One of the two lawsuits against Dreamworks over KF Panda
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Dreamworks Oppositioin Brief to Dunn's appeal
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