Luc Besson ordered to pay €465,000 for plagiarism
Filmmaker Luc Besson has been ordered to pay US director John Carpenter €465,000 ($519,000) after being found liable for copyright infringement.
The Frenchman’s 2012 film “Lockout” was found to have plagiarised Carpenter’s 1981 film “Escape from New York”, according to the Court of Appeal of Paris.
“Lockout” is set in 2079 and centres on a CIA agent who is arrested for murdering another agent.
Carpenter’s film is set in 1997 and tells the story of a crime-ridden US where New York’s Manhattan Island has been converted into a prison.
The Court of Appeal handed down its judgment last month and said that both stories were “peppered with similar twists”.
Similarities, according to the court, include that both heroes have to confront prison inmates who are led by a chief with a “strange right arm”, find hugely important briefcases and meet a former sidekick who then dies.
The court ordered Besson to pay Carpenter €465,000 in damages for moral damage suffered and for the infringement.
