District court dismisses claim for copyright infringement
against writers, producers and distributors of television show
Yellowjackets, holding no substantial similarity between
protectable elements of Yellowjackets and plaintiff's
2013 film Eden.
Eden Film Production LLC owns the copyright in the 2013 feature
film Eden, a survival thriller about a U.S. men's
soccer team that crashes on a remote Pacific island after winning
the World Cup. In the film, roughly a dozen members of the team are
stranded on the remote island for two weeks, the survivors split
into two factions over disputes about conserving supplies and
caring for the injured, and, after several survivors are killed as
a result of infighting, the remaining castaways are rescued by a
helicopter.
Plaintiff sued the writers, producers and distributors of the
television show Yellowjackets for copyright infringement,
alleging that Yellowjackets unlawfully appropriated
elements of plaintiff's film. The story in
Yellowjackets takes place in two different time periods
and chronicles the lives of former members of a high school
girls' soccer team. In the first time period, the 1990s, the
soccer team crashes in a Canadian forest. Isolated in the woods,
the girls experience and begin to believe in the supernatural
powers of the wilderness, which leads certain of them to engage in
witchcraft-like practices. The second time period, the present day,
depicts the lives of the surviving women, who are affected by
ongoing "witchy activities" and visions stemming from
their traumatic experiences in the wilderness years earlier.
Defendants moved to dismiss on the basis that the works are not
substantially similar—a required element of a claim for
copyright infringement in the absence of direct evidence of
copying. The district court granted defendants' motion to
dismiss, holding that under the "extrinsic test" for
copyright infringement used by courts in the Ninth Circuit, which
requires an objective comparison of the "plot, themes,
dialogue, mood, setting, pace, characters, and sequence of events
in two works," there were no substantial similarities between
the protectable elements of the two works.
With respect to plot, plaintiff conceded that the present-day
timeline of Yellowjackets bears little to no resemblance
to the plot of Eden but argued that the "entire"
1990s timeline from the series was copied from the film. Plaintiff
claimed, for example, that both works allude to cannibalism. The
court held, however, that the movie does not incorporate
cannibalism but instead depicts an ongoing dispute about whether to
withhold food from survivors. Similarly, the court rejected
plaintiff's argument that the works are similar because an
assistant coach in Yellowjackets burns down a cabin and a
trainer in Eden commits suicide. While plaintiff
characterized both events as an attempt to "escape" the
survivors' dire situation, the court found that "these two
instances bear little resemblance to each other as plot
points." While both works depict survivors attempting to
escape isolation, trying to contact rescuers and splitting into
factions, those elements are unprotectable scene a faire inherent
to the survival genre, the court held. The only protectable
similarity between the plots of the two works is that, in each
work, the team's head coach dies and is survived by his two
children, who are stranded along with the surviving team members.
The court found, however, that this similarity, standing alone, was
insufficient to establish substantial similarity as a matter of
law.
Regarding the works' moods and themes, the court concluded that
while both works may be "somber," "brooding"
and "darkly comedic," those similarities necessarily
follow from the "unprotectable basic plot premises" of
survival stories. Even if both works examine the theme that all
people possess an innate capacity for violence and darkness, these
tropes are common in the survival genre.
Nor were the characters substantially similar, the court held. Any
similarities operated only at a "high level," the court
noted, and, upon closer examination, concluded that the characters
are "fundamentally different." For example, plaintiff
claimed that the respective team captains, Slim and Jackie, are
similar because each character is a highly talented soccer player.
As the court observed, however, team captains are often talented
and chosen as captains for that very reason. The characters were
dissimilar in other important ways, according to the court: Slim is
"an adult, male, Black, elite international athlete who serves
as a moral authority and selfless leader to a band of
survivors," while Jackie is "a teenage, white, whiny,
self-absorbed girl who, though formerly popular, is excluded, and
eventually eaten, by her peers."
Finally, differences in setting and pace undermined plaintiff's
claim of substantial similarity. The movie is set on a tropical
island and occurs over a single timeline spanning two weeks.
Yellowjackets, by contrast, is set in the Canadian
wilderness and follows characters across two timelines separated by
at least 20 years.
Because plaintiff failed to allege that the works are substantially
similar, the district court dismissed plaintiff's claim in its
entirety, with prejudice and without leave to refile.
Summary prepared by Frank D'Angelo and Keane Barger
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