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<\/a><\/p>\nNow here’s a painting by painter Roger Dean, who is perhaps most famous for his album covers for “Yes”:<\/p>\n
And now Dean is suing<\/a>:<\/p>\n Iconic cover artist Roger Dean has filed a lawsuit against movie director James Cameron over 2009 movie Avatar.<\/p>\n Dean claims visualisation of Pandora, the world on which the film is set, was based heavily on his artwork.<\/p>\n He\u2019s demanded $50m in damages \u2013 and he also wants Twentieth Century Fox to ensure Avatar is never seen again in its current form.<\/p>\n In papers lodged at New York District Court last week, and revealed by Deadline, Dean\u2019s representatives argue that floating islands and stone arches as seen in the movie bear so much resemblance to his creations that it amounts to breach of copyright.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I don’t doubt that Cameron, or someone in his design department, was mightily influenced by Dean, but influence isn’t something that should be covered under copyright.<\/p>\n Dean’s ideas, stated in broad terms, are not unique – there have been floating islands in science fiction for decades (the original Star Trek<\/em> did a city on a cloud, not to mention the floating city in Gulliver’s Travels<\/em>). What really makes the similarities so striking is that Avatar seems to echo Dean’s distinctive visual style so strongly. But style should not be copyrightable.<\/p>\n Think of Bill Sienkiewicz’s early comics, when he was a carbon copy of Neal Adams. You couldn’t find a clearer example of someone completely swiping someone else’s visual style (except later, when Dave McKean’s first comics were a carbon copy of Sienkiewicz’s mature style, or earlier, when a young Neal Adams swiped his distinctive inking style from Stan Drake). Should Adams have been able to sue?<\/p>\n If style becomes a copyright infringement, that would be devastating to young artists, and have an enormous chilling effect on art.<\/p>\n It’s certainly plausible that Cameron and co. didn’t do the right thing here. If they were consciously basing their world on Dean’s work, then they should have hired Dean to be a concept artist on the film, like the Lord of the Rings<\/em> films did with Alan Lee. A relatively small expenditure for a big-budget film can be an enormous windfall for an artist.<\/p>\n But even so, not everything that is wrong should be illegal, or actionable. The damage to free speech of making style copyrightable vastly outweigh the benefits.<\/p>\n (Related: A list of earlier works<\/a> that are, in one way or another, similar to Cameron’s Avatar<\/em>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here’s an image from the James Cameron movie “Avatar”: Now here’s a painting by painter Roger Dean, who is perhaps most famous for his album covers for “Yes”: And now Dean is suing: Iconic cover artist Roger Dean has filed … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n