{"id":1872,"date":"2017-11-27T22:55:56","date_gmt":"2017-11-28T03:55:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/?p=1872"},"modified":"2023-07-25T11:45:16","modified_gmt":"2023-07-25T15:45:16","slug":"happiness-and-sadness-are-not-batman-and-james-bond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/2017\/11\/happiness-and-sadness-are-not-batman-and-james-bond\/","title":{"rendered":"Happiness and Sadness are Not Batman and James Bond"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Over the summer<\/a>, Disney and Pixar were sued by childhood development expert Denise Daniels over the film\u00a0Inside Out<\/a>.<\/em>\u00a0She claims that the film was based on her TV show,\u00a0The Moodsters<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>and that she was uncompensated for her work. As reported by\u00a0The Hollywood Reporter<\/a>, there are some similarities between the two films as both conceptualize the emotions as anthropomorphic characters that have a distinct color associated with them.\u00a0In both properties<\/a>, happiness was personified as a yellow character, sadness as a blue character and anger as a red character.\u00a0Both properties<\/a>\u00a0also portray these characters as living deep within a child’s mind and depict how they control a child’s\u00a0emotions. Daniel’s alleges in\u00a0her complaint<\/a>\u00a0that she pitched the idea to Disney and Pixar\u00a0every year from 2005-2009<\/a>. She finished a pilot for\u00a0The Moodsters<\/em>\u00a0in 2007 and took the pilot to Disney<\/a>. Pixar released\u00a0Inside Out<\/em>\u00a0in the\u00a0summer of 2015<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Daniel’s is suing Disney for a\u00a0breach of an implied-in-fact contract<\/a>, claiming that she relied on the customary assumption in the entertainment industry that she would be compensated if Disney and Pixar ever used her ideas.\u00a0She argues\u00a0<\/a>that because emotions are abstract, the anthropomorphization of these characters were her creation and she is the exclusive owner of those ideas. This lawsuit is similar to another lawsuit also from this past summer, where\u00a0Esplanade Pictures<\/a>\u00a0claimed that writer Gary L. Goldman was uncompensated for the ideas he pitched to Disney, ideas that would eventually become the basis of\u00a0Zootopia<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

As reported by Law360<\/a>, Disney moved to dismiss the case on November 17th, 2017, claiming that copyright protections only extend to characters under exceptional circumstances.\u00a0For instance, characters like\u00a0Batman<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0James Bond<\/em>\u00a0are protected by copyright because years of works depicting these characters have made them widely recognizable. As such, any traits used that are closely related to those characters could be protected under copyright law.\u00a0Disney argues\u00a0that the characters in\u00a0The Moodsters<\/em> are not instantly recognizable and therefore should not be offered protection under copyright law.\u00a0Disney’s lawyers argue\u00a0that Daniel’s did not invent the universal emotions of fear, happiness, and anger, and cannot claim to “have a monopoly” over depictions of those emotions as characters. Furthermore,\u00a0in their exhibits, Disney points other movies and television shows made prior to\u00a0The Moodsters<\/em> that similarly personified emotions as anthropomorphic characters.\u00a0The case is currently pending\u00a0in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.<\/p>\n

Adele Zhang is an Entertainment Highlight Contributor for the Harvard Journal of Sports and Entertainment Law and a current first year student at Harvard Law School (Class of 2020).<\/em><\/p>\n

Photo: “A Total Gem- Inside Out Movie Review<\/a>” by Bago Games is licensed under CC BY 2.0<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the summer, Disney and Pixar were sued by childhood development expert Denise Daniels over the film\u00a0Inside Out.\u00a0She claims that the film was based on her TV show,\u00a0The Moodsters,\u00a0and that she was uncompensated for her work. As reported by\u00a0The Hollywood Reporter, there are some similarities between the two films as both conceptualize the emotions as 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