Roger Dean and Avatar Revisited: Copyright Infringement? (with images!)

[Author’s Note: since this post this matter has come to a conclusion about which you can read here.]

A couple of weeks back I posted a Musing regarding Roger Dean’s lawsuit against James Cameron.  You can read the post here.  Since that time I have learned that the suit was filed in Federal Court, specifically the New York Southern District Court, with the case number 1:13-cv-04479-JMF.  The Judge assigned to the case is Jesse M. Furman.  Furthermore, the Defendants include also 20th Century Fox Film, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, Dune Entertainment, Lightstorm, and Ingenious Film Partners 2.  Finally, as a big Yes fan I cannot believe I did not ready know this, but “Roger” is Dean’s middle name; according to the Court docket, Roger Dean’s first name is “William”!

As I posted before, I will be keeping an eye on this case as it proceeds and will post relevant updates when they happen.  In the meantime, I found a website which had a bunch of images side-by-side which really showed, I think, how much James Cameron, at the very least, was “inspired” by Dean in making the movie Avatar, although some, notably Roger Dean, would say (though possibly in not these words) that these images show how much Cameron ripped off Dean’s images and concepts when making Avatar.

According to the Court’s docket, Dean sued Cameron under the “copyright infringement” umbrella.  Check out the images below (Dean’s and Cameron’s are intermixed; can you tell which is which?) and feel free to post your comments on whether you think Dean has at least a decent intellectual property case against Cameron.

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