New Line Cinema, the studio behind the upcoming film adaptation ‘The Golden Compass’ has sued a video company over its documentary, ‘Beyond the Golden Compass: The Magic of Philip Pullman’ (which was due to hit DVD shelves this Tuesday) for unfair competition laws.
Dose.ca gives us this:
The lawsuit, filed the week of November 12 in New York District Court, claims Koch violated the studio’s copyrights as well as state and federal unfair competition laws in the planned release of the video, “Beyond the Golden Compass: The Magic of Philip Pullman.” The studio claims damages of at least $10 million.
“In a cynical and transparent effort to unfairly compete with (and) capitalize on the massive publicity and promotional effort attendant to the upcoming release of plaintiff’s film, and in complete disregard of plaintiff’s exclusive rights in the underlying materials, defendants have produced and are marketing and distributing the infringing video,” the lawsuit states.
Additionally, the defendants, which also include Schwartz & Co., XYZ Corps. and various Koch entities, allegedly created promotional materials for the video similar to New Line’s “Golden Compass” marketing materials.
Okay…this took me all day to think about due to the fact I thought my first reaction was completely wrong. However, I still don’t feel any different about this subject, and I’m just going to say it. Am I the only one who thinks this lawsuit is just a greedy attempt at getting more money?
This documentary will not be any competition for the film. The documentary is about the author of the best selling novel, and has nothing to do with the movie. In my opinion, releasing the documentary around the release date of the movie seemed like a smart idea. I have seen tons of movies that have gone straight to DVD that blatantly rip-off other films, like ‘Snakes on a Train,’ ‘King of the Lost World,’ ‘The War of the Worlds’ and I never heard of these films having lawsuits.
Anyways, I know I might be in the minority when it comes to this topic, but I just think launching a 10 million dollar lawsuit on a video company releasing a documentary that will be lucky if it makes one quarter of the money the film adaptation will make opening weekend in its entire DVD shelf life is just plain petty.
What are your thoughts?
