Director Cameron avoids $50m Avatar copyright infringement ruling
Filmmaker James Cameron has successfully had claims of copyright infringement against his film Avatar dismissed at a New York court.
Cameron, known for directing Avatar and Titanic, was subject to 14 claims of infringing the copyright of works created by artist Roger Dean that were featured in his collections Dragon’s Dreams, Views and Magnetic Storms.
The UK-based artist, who has collaborated with the rock band Yes, claimed damages worth $50 million. He alleged that much of the landscape in the fantasy world Pandora, featured in Avatar, and its inhabitants, the Na’vi race, resembled his works.
However, Judge Jesse Furman at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed the case yesterday (September 17). He rejected the arguments made by Dean, which included him showing similarities of his works with books about and derived from Avatar, but not from the film itself.
He also rejected postings from anonymous users on the internet presented by Dean arguing that his work and the film are similar, as well as stills from the film that were cropped and rotated.
Furman claimed that Dean’s most convincing argument was that the floating world in Hallelujah Mountains, a landscape in Avatar, was similar to the Floating Islands motif in his work, but the judge concluded that he “does not have a monopoly on the idea of floating or airborne land”.
Avatar was released in 2009 globally and currently remains the highest film by gross revenue of all time. Set in 2154 AD, the film features humans attempting to mine a mineral called unobtanium in Pandora, a land inhabited by the Na’vi population.
