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Plagiarism in famous movies?
[/vc_column_text][us_separator][vc_column_text] 20 years ago, the movie “Ice Age” was released, invading all the children and people with advertising who, after seeing it, began to take a liking to its squirrel “Scrat”, a very funny character who was positioned in a secondary plane to the main story but undoubtedly had his prominence due to his fight to protect an acorn that he always carried with him and unleashed a series of very entertaining events by doing so. The animation of the squirrel is very characteristic since it has bulging eyes, an elongated mouth and a long tail. Years before the film aired, Ivy Silberstein, an animated character designer, created a squirrel with the aforementioned description called “Sqrat” which results from the union in English of squirrel and rat, but in doing so she did not imagine the dispute she would have with the production company FOX years later. What happened was that Fox was in production on the Ice Age film and hired Blue Sky Studios to draw its characters, and they created "Scrat," a squirrel with the same characteristics as its character "Sqrat." In response, Ivy filed a lawsuit in court, claiming that this other squirrel character was an imitation of the character she created. She also requested a ban on its promotion and distribution of the parts of the film where this iconic character appeared, and requested that no products related to it be sold. She claimed that she filed a trademark application for Sqrat with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, even creating a website and many articles featuring her version of Sqrat. After this, the court determined that to determine whether there was a copyright infringement, Ivy had to prove that her work had indeed been copied by comparing "Sqrat" to "Scrat." The person in charge later commented that there was no exact similarity between the two squirrels, except for their names, but that this wasn't sufficient grounds for infringement. Furthermore, Ivy's 1999 trademark application was denied. Therefore, Fox was able to continue using Scrat in subsequent sequels, and the infringement was unsuccessful. After two more attempts, Ivy's lawsuit remained unsuccessful, and it wasn't until 2019 that Disney purchased the Fox production company. Ivy was able to meet with the team and reach an agreement on the copyrights of both Scrat and Scrat, which benefited both parties. The solution was that Scrat could no longer appear in new sequels, but past films would not be affected. What do you think about this? Another example of how intellectual property is necessary to protect your ideas. [/vc_column_text][us_separator][vc_column_text]Written by: Lexincorp El Salvador [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
