Cartoonist Who Claimed 'Kung Fu Panda' Ripped Off His Work Might Be Headed To Prison

from the from-plaintiff-to-defendant-(and-civil-to-criminal) dept

Fri, Jan 8th 2016 8:30am — Tim Cushing

So, you've sued a major studio for copyright infringement and lost. How bad could it be? Here are the possible outcomes, rated from least to most painful.

4. Dismissed without prejudice. (A glimmer of hope. You can refile.)

3. Dismissed with prejudice. (You're done.)

2. Dismissed with prejudice and fees awarded to the defendant. (If you thought paying one lawyer was expensive…)

1. You're prosecuted for wire fraud and perjury and face fines of $500,000 and 25 years in prison.

Jayme Gordon, the other person to sue Dreamworks for allegedly copying his work has won the Worst Outcome Ever sweepstakes. The cartoonist claimed Dreamworks ripped off his sketches and he seemingly had the evidence to prove this -- including a rarity in many of these little-guy-sues-big-studio lawsuits: actual registered works.

Gordon demanded $12 million and a cut of the proceeds. He survived a motion to dismiss and seemed ready to take a serious run at the studio. Two years after he filed the lawsuit, Gordon suddenly dismissed it with prejudice and received no settlement for doing so.

Apparently, while Gordon was litigiously complaining about someone ripping him off, he had been ripping off another major player in the animation industry: Disney. The drawings he submitted to the copyright registration office in 2000 (that Gordon claimed to have created in 1992) looked very similar to some found in a Disney coloring book published in 1996.

A deeper investigation into Gordon's actions uncovered even more dubious behavior. Brian Gabriel at Cartoon Brew has more details.

According to the indictment, Gordon saw a trailer for Kung Fu Panda in early 2008. Gordon then revised his Panda Power drawings and registered them as Kung Fu Panda Power with the Copyright Office in May 2008, prior to the June 2008 release of DreamWorks’ animated feature.

In addition, Gordon apparently deleted possibly incriminating evidence from his personal computer to better obscure the origin of his "original" illustrations.

During discovery related to the lawsuit, DreamWorks’ attorneys unearthed evidence that on April 10, 2012 Gordon had deliberately erased computer files holding material related to the lawsuit. In fact, Gordon installed and used a program called Permanent Eraser to remove the files, and then deleted Permanent Eraser itself on April 13, 2012.

So, how do bogus copyright claims rise to the level of wire fraud? Well, in the same way that almost any false communication can be considered wire fraud if the government feels like pursuing it.

The Cybercrime Unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston will now prosecute Gordon, alleging that, when his attorneys sent four emails on his behalf related to the lawsuit, including requests for discovery and a settlement proposal, Gordon “did knowingly transmit…by means of wire communication in interstate commerce, writings…for the purpose of executing” his fraudulent scheme, and that by knowingly lying under oath he committed perjury.

If only Gordon had hand-delivered those communications…

That's the bogus part of this prosecution. Sure, perjury is a given, considering the evidence uncovered by Dreamworks' lawyers. But wire fraud? That's just charge stacking. This office, however, isn't exactly shy about trumping up charges to make itself seem more impressive. It's the same US Attorney's Office that was behind the investigation and prosecution of Aaron Swartz, so this could go very, very badly for Gordon.

Gordon's case does show there's an absolute rock bottom to bogus copyright infringement lawsuits. Most suits never involve anything more than people mistakenly thinking IP laws protect ideas rather than expressions, or that similar ideas/expressions must be infringing because it's not possible for more than one person to think of the same thing. Both are the result of people overestimating their originality and grasp of copyright law.

Gordon's case looks like someone attempting to knock bags off a passing money train. Many have made similar efforts, but Gordon has surpassed them all in terms of complete, abject failure.

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Filed Under: copyright, fraud, jayme gordon, kung fu panda, lawsuits
Companies: disney

22 Comments

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Pixelation, 8 Jan 2016 @ 8:35am

Apparently Dreamworks' Kung Fu is stronger than Gordon's.
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Mason Wheeler (profile), 8 Jan 2016 @ 8:39am

Re:
The courts are about to throw his life into utter pandamonium.
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Ninja (profile), 8 Jan 2016 @ 8:47am

It seems that Gordon is exceedingly bad at coloring so add that to the list of failures. The thing is still black and white!
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Berenerd (profile), 8 Jan 2016 @ 8:54am

Who gets the movie rights?
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Max (profile), 8 Jan 2016 @ 8:57am

I'm a bit puzzled - once you shred something with a proper wiping tool such as mentioned, how exactly do you prove WHAT was there before? It can't be illegal to just install / uninstall a wiping tool, can it?!?
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Matt, 8 Jan 2016 @ 9:12am

Read that as beheaded
Read the article wondering why the cartoonist was going to be beheaded in a US prison. Very confused.
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Anonymous Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2016 @ 9:19am

Re:
What would be the plot, failure of a greedy tool?
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rikuo, 8 Jan 2016 @ 9:27am

Re:
If I'm not mistaken, those programs look for where the files in question are stored, delete the file and then overwrite the areas where those files are stored with random 1s and 0s. However, there are still ways to recover the data even then, which is why you have to do a number of 'passes' that is, delete, overwrite, delete, overwrite again and again a number of times.
I'm going to guess that he only did one pass with the program.
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PaulT (profile), 8 Jan 2016 @ 9:44am

Re:
Depends on the tool and how it's used. It's often possble to recover the file at least partially unless you physically destroy the drive. Plus, some programs have weaker test settings he could have accidentally used if he wasn't technically proficient, and many people recommend using more than one method. On top of that, if he stored files in a way that makes it obvious what was in there, the court may not need the actual file to prove he was defrauding them.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2016 @ 9:48am

Re: Re:
Kinda seems like it would be cheaper to get a new hard drive...
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DannyB (profile), 8 Jan 2016 @ 10:11am

Re: Re: Re:
A new computer.
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DannyB (profile), 8 Jan 2016 @ 10:12am

Re: Re:
But that sounds so complicated compared to just putting it in the recycle bin.

Advanced users could even be more secure by picking Empty Recycle Bin. :-)

The wonderful illusion of security.
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JoeCool (profile), 8 Jan 2016 @ 11:04am

Happens all the time
If a movie is successful (I won't say profitable since no Hollywood movie has ever made a profit), there will always be someone appearing to sue claiming the studio stole their "idea" or "story" or whatever. But this reminds me of the "Real Muggles" lawsuit where some American author sued Warner Bros. over the term "muggles" and Harry Potter. Then got in trouble for altering some of her work she submitted as evidence.
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crade (profile), 8 Jan 2016 @ 11:44am

Re: Re:
More likely something like he was told not to erase anything, and there is evidence that he used this tool to erase *something* and thats all it takes
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Bergman (profile), 8 Jan 2016 @ 12:53pm

Re: Happens all the time
And then got immortalized in the Harry Potter video games as a writer so bad that her stories caused vomiting.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2016 @ 12:58pm

Re: Re:
That's what he gets for trying to bamboozle everyone.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2016 @ 3:10pm

I agree with punishing this guy for trying to bamboozle the court.

Now we just need to have punishments (read: mandatory jail time) for corporations and patent lawyers that try to bamboozle the justice system.
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any moose cow word, 8 Jan 2016 @ 5:59pm

Re: Re:
That's actually not true. The margins of error on hard drives nowadays are so tight that a single wipe would be sufficient to prevent recovery by the drive itself. You could, maybe, recover those sectors by removing the disk from the drive and using very expensive laboratory grade equipment, but that's pushing it.

The real possibility is that he used a crappy program that only overwrote the file in it's current location. Modern OS may have multiple copies stored on disk, or even fragments from past copies of the file that been "deallocated" from the file system but not overwritten.
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any moose cow word, 8 Jan 2016 @ 6:07pm

Re: Re: Re:
Aside from regular off-line backups, computers have various systems for making other backups as well.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/previous-versions-files-faq

https://support.apple.com /kb/PH18862?locale=en_US
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2016 @ 9:01pm

Money Train
> Gordon's case looks like someone attempting to knock bags off a passing money train.

You mean by the US District Attorney?

Were I on a jury where such charge stacking took place, I would more likely than not refuse to convict due to the stacking alone.
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klaus (profile), 14 Jan 2016 @ 2:14am

Hubris and ignorance
Demanding 12 million + a percentage, from Dreamworks, for something that looks nothing like a Panda, and which by all accounts he cribbed from Disney.

He mustn't have known that Dreamworks are tight with Disney.
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Sabine, 19 Sep 2016 @ 7:55am

Re:
Does anybody know what happened with Jayme Gordon? I'm from the Netherlands, Europe. I met this guy in 1996...
Coincidentally, I come to this article.....
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