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Orphan Black facing copyright lawsuit in LA

A legal fight claiming Orphan Black stole its concept from another writer will proceed in an LA court.

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Orphan Black‘s Temple Street Productions & BBC America are facing a multi-million dollar lawsuit in the US amid suggestions it cloned the series from another writer’s screenplay.

Writer Stephen Hendricks alleges the hit series infringes his own work Double Double, submitted to Temple Street co-president David Fortier in 2004.

The allegations surfaced a year ago but Canadian-based Temple Street and Fortier threw up a jurisdictional challenge to the LA court.

A Californian judge has now ruled in Hendricks favour that Temple Street also had a US division.

Hendricks has listed several parallels between characters in Double Double and Orphan Black, including:

Both protagonists are young (early 20’s), attractive women who want the same thing: to understand who they are and where they come from.
Both protagonists are “adopted,” raised by someone other than their birth parents.
Both protagonists begin the story not realising they are anything other than who they are told and therefore think they are.
Both protagonists begin the story in a place of relative comfort with their origins.
Both protagonists come from modest means.
Both protagonists are not leaders or great thinkers.
Both protagonists are reactive rather than aggressive/proactive.
Both protagonists are vulnerable, smart, and truth-seeking.
Both protagonists are initially conveyed as being human, but whether they are human or clone remains questionable.
Both protagonists survive extreme threats and attacks. Their survival skills increase throughout the story.
Both protagonists are at the mercy of the world in terms of not having the skills or tools necessary to confront their creators and pursuers on equal ground.

The lawsuit argues: “The similarities between the Series and the Screenplay are so substantial that it is a virtual statistical impossibility that the former could have been created independently from the latter.”

Orphan Black is credited as the creation of Graeme Manson and John Fawcett.

 

Source: Hollywood Reporter, ArtLawJournal

6 Responses

  1. Not a good situation steeling someone else idea, I’m amazed it doesn’t happen more often though.

    This is a show I’ve been meaning to get into, just haven’t had the time.

  2. Most of those are vague TV stereotypes with limited options e.g. a poor girl in her early 20s, adopted without knowing who they are, encounters birth mother, reactive character, not a leader, not a great thinker, starts content (part of any U shape plot or tragedy and every US hero myth), at a disadvantage to powerful characters but a moral character committed to fight for truth. That describes Legacy which ticks the majority of the so called significant similarities but has no connection.

    The only specific ones are female twins/clones raised apart. Female is 50%, separated twins isn’t novel in drama and forms an entire branch of biology, clones are now a popular idea in SF.

    And I note they didn’t list multiple male and female clones with a genetic defect created as experiments by the sinister military/industrial complex.

      1. Also doesn’t help if the producers saw the script/scenario years before OB was made-then again Paramount was able to get away with having ‘copied’ the Babylon Five scenario for Star Trek DS9.

        1. DS9 was based in an established Star Trek mythology including Bajor, the Kardashians and Worf from NG. They didn’t copy any specific character, plot or mythology details, only a non copyrightable SF ideas. While Straczynski had previously pitched B5 to Paramount, they didn’t let Berman or Piller see his material. If people haven’t seen the material then there is no case.

          As DS9 evolved to become more of a Space Opera the shows became more similar, but as B5 was on air by then and the two shows and networks were competing for the same audience that doesn’t require a conspiracy theory.

          Straczynski was to some extent inspired by Treks. He wanted a more realistic less utopian version of SF set in one place to allow for more consistency and length and depth of storytelling, (and reduced costs).

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