In July last year, there was a domestic animation movie called "Autobots" that caused a huge sensation, and the reason for the sensation was suspected of plagiarizing Disney's classic animation film "Racing Story".
Cartoon characters in The Autobots
Still the same taste, still the same recipe, just a slight change of name and even as a new movie out of the sale!
Not long ago, there was even news that "Autobots" will come out with a sequel, which is really jumpy! At this point, Disney could no longer sit still and sued the film and television company in court, claiming a total of 4 million yuan in related costs.
And the "Autobots" director's reply to the daily economic news (WeChat: nbdnews) reporter is even more surprising...
Disney 'Fall Reckoning'
Log on to Disney's official Website China, the animation stars on the homepage include Racing Story, and the iconic image of "Lightning McKunn" has been developed into various derivative products, including hanging pictures, towels, school bags and toys, and games.
The "Lightning McKunn" first appeared in "Cars 1" released in 2006, and in 2011, Disney launched a sequel "Cars 2" in the summer and won the international box office champion.
Stills from Cars 2
And after 4 years, in the summer of 2015, the one-step poster image and name are very similar to the "Racing Story" of the domestic animation film "Auto Man Story" was released, which was accused by netizens of "refreshing the lower limit of the domestic animation career" The film became popular at that time with ultra-low scoring comments, and Zhuo Jianrong, chairman and director of the film's production company Xiamen Blue Flame Film and Television Company, was also drowned in the "saliva" of many netizens and became an alternative Internet celebrity at that time.
In addition to being accused of "plagiarism" and "copycat" Disney's classic racing animation image, this domestic animation that triggered a wave of "bad reviews" was also questioned by a group of netizens about the rough picture quality, low cost, etc., and even triggered bad reviews in the circle, believing that the film was released by re-editing the previous continuous animation short film packaging, which can be called "zero cost". In the end, the film received more than 5 million yuan at the box office, and in addition, it was able to obtain 250,000 yuan of government subsidies according to relevant policies.
Compared with excited netizens, Disney has been relatively calm before, and it was only after the recent opening of Shanghai Disneyland that it raised the banner of rights protection for the first time.
On the second day of Disneyland's opening, on the 21st, at the Shanghai Pudong New Area People's Court, Disney and Pixar sued the producer, distributor and broadcast platform of the domestic animation "Autobots" for copyright infringement and unfair competition disputes.
The plaintiff's agent said that the animated images K1 and K2 of Automan plagiarized the animated images "Lightning McQueen" and "Flemish Heights" of "Cars".
The promotional poster for Autobots deliberately obscures the word "people" in it
In addition, the name of "AutoBots" is also very similar to "Racing Story", and the word "Ren" is deliberately covered in the promotional posters, resulting in confusion and misidentification among the audience, and its behavior constitutes copyright infringement and unfair competition. The court was requested to order the three companies to stop the infringement, and at the same time, Xiamen Blue Flame Film and Television Animation Co., Ltd. and Beijing Basis Point Film and Television Culture Media Co., Ltd. jointly compensated the plaintiff for economic losses of 3 million yuan, and jointly compensated the plaintiff for the reasonable expenses of 1 million yuan incurred to stop the infringement.
After the defendant, the director "more cheerful"?
At present, the above case has not yet been finally pronounced, but for provoking this lawsuit, Zhuo Jianrong, chairman and director of Xiamen Blue Flame Film and Television Company, is quite confident...
Yesterday (June 28), Zhuo Jianrong told the Daily Economic News (WeChat: nbdnews) reporter:
In fact, the dispute began in August last year and has been heard three times so far, and the other party has repeatedly changed its litigation claims twice, resulting in the delay in the case so far.
At the same time, Zhuo Jianrong accused various statements circulating on the Internet and some media reports of taking things out of context and did not truly restore the incident itself. He believes that most critics of the film are people who have not actually seen the film, and that the story of the film was originally designed based on a young age.
Image source: Network
Zhuo Jianrong admitted to reporters that before the release of "Autobots", he did shoot a continuous animated short film with the same theme to be piloted on the network, and it was officially based on the reaction of the pilot that he finally decided to shoot a big movie. The production cost of this big movie itself is not like the "zero cost" as the outside world calls it, and the cost of its production is the average level of domestic animation at present. The film's eventual 5.84 million box office did not reach profitability, and due to poor online reviews and Disney reasons, it did not receive 250,000 government subsidies.
The basic views expressed by Zhuo Jianrong are also the main points of his agent's defense in court, in the previous trial, Blue Flame's agents believed that the image design of K1 and K2 of "Autobots" was independently created from the existing models and did not constitute substantial similarities. At the same time, the plaintiff's film name belongs to the descriptive name of the subject matter category, which cannot be identified as a unique name of the well-known commodity, and the defendant advertises that "Auto Man Story" is a domestic film, and consumers will not cause confusion. In addition, the film is loss-making and not profitable after deducting the associated costs.
Zhuo Jianrong also further revealed to the Daily Economic News (WeChat: nbdnews) reporter that it is already making preliminary preparations for "Autobots 2" and plans to release it in 2017, but in the end it depends on the trial result of the case.
For Zhuo Jianrong's statement, some animation industry insiders have put forward different views.
A person in charge of an animation company in Xiamen told reporters:
From the perspective of production costs, the investment in "Autobots" is relatively low, and even for films with a general investment level of animation production, the picture quality is far beyond this controversial animation. In addition, the animated film does have the suspicion of repackaging the edit, if this is the way of operation, then the film will eventually be able to make a profit at the box office of more than 5.8 million yuan.
However, the industry insider also admitted that at present, for most domestic animation production companies, the practice of copycats is also very common, and how to "live" before wanting to "have feelings" is the top priority at present. However, it also disagreed with Zhuo Jianrong's approach, "which does not represent the majority of the industry." ”
In addition, why did Disney, which often infringes its trademarks and products, choose this incident to defend its rights? There are also views that most small enterprises cannot afford Disney's sky-high rights protection costs due to their small scale when they infringe, and Disney's own litigation costs for rights protection are not low.
With the opening of Disney's first park in China, Disney hopes to maintain its image and intellectual property rights in the Chinese market to a greater extent.
This article is | original article by | Daily Economic News nbdnews
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