Skadoosh! Man Who Claimed He Created 'Kung Fu Panda' Gets Two Years in Prison
What's the difference between "Panda Power" and "Kung Fu Panda"? Two years in jail.
That's the sentence given Wednesday to an amateur cartoonist who was convicted of falsely claiming that the DreamWorks studio stole the idea for its hit animated movie from him.
Jayme Gordon, 51, sued DreamWorks for copyright infringement in 2011, demanding $12 million. The studio spent more than $3 million fighting the case, and Gordon has been ordered to pay that amount in restitution.
Massachusetts prosecutors said Gordon had created some characters in the 1990s for a series called Panda Power. After he saw a trailer for "Kung Fu Panda" in 2008, he changed the drawings to match the movie images and claimed Hollywood was ripping him off.
He was caught, prosecutors said, when it was discovered that his revised panda pictures were traced from a 1996 Disney coloring book, even though they were dated several years earlier. At trial, Gordon denied copying them and insisted DreamWorks and Disney had also used his work for movies including "The Incredibles," "A Bug's Life," and "Flushed Away."