From the legal category of “Does that every work?” we hear news that 3 years after the fact, a Chinese author is suing the makers of Day After Tomorrow for stealing his idea.
Chinese science fiction writer is fighting back, suing News Corps’, 20th Century Fox and other Chinese companies for stealing his story idea.
Li Jianmin, filed a lawsuit alleging Fox of copyright infringement saying his story idea was stolen and used for ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ which was released in 2003. Li also named director Roland Emmerich and the Chinese companies that imported, distributed and screened the movie in his suit.
Granted, it is possible that these things do happen. People lift or improve on ideas all the time. We already talked about why similar movies come out at the same time (Ants/Bugs Life, Dante’s Peak/Volcano, Armageddon/Deep Impact) with a similar concept.
But I have a hard time believing that this guy even has a case. Did it take 3 and a half years before he found out about the movie? Ok, it was released in North America, but plenty Hollywood films get released in China as well.
So now he sues them for stealing his idea. Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t.
The sad thing is that people just cannot grasp is that it is entirely possible with 5 billion sentient beings capable of creative thought might find TWO somewhere that have the same idea.
I used to be an avid dice and paper RPG player. I met a guy in the 80s who had a superhero called Domino who he described as looking featureless and made of Mercury, and his power was to take the shape and appearance of anything he had previously come into physical contact with. Sound familiar cough*Terminator2*cough.
So it happens. But someone does it first. So you sue.
Even more sad, is that even if it is a complete and random coincidence, the guy who sues might still end up with a settlement over it.
