Originally posted by: AnyMal
Originally posted by: DAWeinG
Well to be fair... Disney pirates too...
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I guess everyone is guilty of it... It's just easier to copy someone else's work than come up with your own... College education anyone?
Not even close. Mickey, Goofy, Pooh, etc.. are all Dsiney's original characters which are trademarked. Lion King story is based on the book that is in public domain.
How about Pierrot the Clownfish?
from Wikipedia:
In late 2003, the French children's book author Franck Le Calvez sued Disney, claiming that the story and the characters were stolen from his book Pierrot Le Poisson-Clown (Pierrot the Clownfish). The idea of Pierrot was protected in 1995 and the book was released in France in November 2002.
Summary of Pierrot the Clownfish:
Pierrot is a young clownfish. Pierrot loses his father (eaten by a big fish). Pierrot is separated from his mother but finds her at the end after many adventures.
Exhibit A
I guess Disney could say that in Finding Nemo, Nemo loses his mother, not his father. :laugh:
You also do realize that quite a few Disney characters are based on other works across the world as well right? And granted that most of them may be in the public domain as you say, they have been lobbying and changing IP laws to their favor pretty often. So I guess as long as you have money and lawyers, you can be free of guilt.
And one more thing to add... If copyright/IP laws were intended to be practiced and followed properly, some of those Disney characters would have entered the public domain quite a while ago. But instead, as with money and lawyers, Disney was able to extend the copyright on their characters another 20 years. Mickey Mouse would have entered the public domain in 2003.
Reference
I'm not condoning or defending what China is doing. I'm just trying inform you that Disney is not as clean or legit as you hopefully once thought.