IP
City writer planning to sue Avatar director |
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An amateur Beijing writer alleges Avatar director James Cameron plagiarized his work and said he plans to file a lawsuit, seeking 1 billion yuan in compensation.
"Eighty percent of the plot and the key elements of the story are similar to my 1997 science fiction novel, Tale of the Blue Crows. The obvious similarities definitely cannot be coincidence, said Zhou Shaomou, general manager of a Beijing-based hi-tech business, who also writes fiction in his spare time. Zhou, said he spent more than seven years composing the 1.2-million-word novel, which recounts the epic journey of six astronauts to a distant planet, home to a race of blue skinned beings. "I wrote in my novel that their space journey took them six years, but in Cameron's movie, the journey takes them five years, nine months and 22 days," said Zhou. "I was shocked when I first saw that. It is too close." Zhou said publishing houses told him there was no market for science fiction in China so he signed a contract with Sina.com to publish it online. Zhou said the one billion yuan he is seeking is for the copyright infringement. "I heard that a director, producer or studio should pay at least 10 percent of the box office for using other people's work without permission. That's how I came up with the number," he said. Zhou added that he doesn't think he is asking too much. But the lawsuit has not got far. Zhou went to the local courts in Chaoyang district and Haidian district, respectively, last week, but nobody took him seriously, he said. "Nobody was supportive and many asked why somebody as famous as Cameron would copy an obscure work from a little-know author," said Zhou. "I really wanted to argue back 'why not', but I didn't want to press the point." The latest statistics show that Avatar had earned $2.5 billion as of March 1. Cameron has also been accused of plagiarizing parts of Avatar from Russian authors. Cameron was previously accused of plagiarism by science fiction writer Harlan Ellison over Terminator. He negotiated and settled with Ellison out of court. Yang Huipeng, a lawyer from the Beijing-based Tianyuan Law Firm suggested yesterday that Zhou would have better luck going abroad to file the lawsuit. "He has two options but it is better to sue in America, because if the lawsuit is handled in China and James Cameron or his representatives do not come, then the court's judgment is unlikely to have much effect," said Yang. |
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