Have there ever been lawsuits filed for similar animation?

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Desert_Sky

New member
When I watch cartoons, I notice that some shows with different studios can look very similar to one another. Even when I do my own cartoons, I can sometimes feel that I have subconsciously been influenced by toons that I've watchted. I was just wondering if there has ever been any lawsuits filed where someone claims that their animation style or character is being infringed upon? I think cartoons are unique in that they are often drawn in a "simple" way, such that it's kind of easy to be similar.
 
guess not? lol
I mean if someone made characters that looked like the Simpsons or South Park or Powerpuff, wouldn't they get sued? Or is animation to vague of a thing?
 
I think it only works if you steal their characters, since art can be subjective and what one person thinks it looks like isn't what someone else might think.
 
Law suits are filed in Hollywood all the time. There are so many of them, they hardly get reported on anymore.

This is the single most litigious city on the planet.
 
Doesn't it make people scared that they can get sued so easily? It seems like even if you win, you'd have to spend all that money defending yourself
 
This is why God gave us lawyers and copyrights. If you're smart enough to take the necessary legal precautions to protect your work and possess the binding legal proof that your ideas are in fact your own in the first place, you won't have to worry about frivolous lawsuits.

Someone can't sue someone else for making a cartoon character or animation just for looking similar to something else (unless the latter is an obvious ripoff of the former, like, say, if I created a superhero called Super-Duperman who looked just like Superman only with a white costume and a 'D' on his chest, and I tried to get the character published as a serious work and not as a parody or spoof), in which case the party doing the ripping off wouldn't have a leg to stand on and justice would be swiftly served.

Art is subjective, but plagarism is obvious.
 
One infamous example is when John Kricfalusi tried to sue Trey Parker and Matt Stone because he felt that Mr. Hanky the Christmas Poo was too close to his own creation, Nutty the Friendly Log.

There's been a bunch of cases where people have claimed that they came up with the original ideas for popular cartoons (off the top of my head: Spongebob, Finding Nemo, Chicken Run) but in most cases their creations weren't animated, so I guess that they wouldn't qualify for this thread.
 
Because after over 4000 years of humanity, he was the first person to create a talking piece of poo.

Seriously, it amazes me that after all these years that humans have been making stories, people still think they're being original and their "originality must not be taken away".

If the Greeks rose from the dead, they'd get their Roman pals and sue us left and right.
 
Actually there is the case of Ralph Hinkley that used a lot of the Superman elements but was deemed not an infringement because it was seen as having a different personality and carrying on the superhero genre like many before it.
 
Some guy named Joe Tomasini sued Disney because he thought they copied his screenplay and character designs but that case was thrown out as it was proven that Disney had no access to the guy's creations.
 
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