White Wolf Sues Sony

Posted by Hemos on Sunday September 7, 2003 @11:29PM from the going-after-the-big-game dept.

etherlad writes "White Wolf, makers of pen-and-paper RPGs such as Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse, and author Nancy A. Collins, are suing Sony Pictures, Screen Gems and Lakeshore Entertainment for copyright infringement in the upcoming Underworld movie, which they claim not only is blatantly the World of Darkness with the serial numbers (partially) filed off, but that the movie is obviously ripped off Nancy Collins' novel Love of Monsters, also set in the World of Darkness. There's a PDF of the legal brief floating around, and to me (IANAL) it really looks like WW has a case."

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How old are vampires and Shakespeare again? ;p by pocopoco · 2003-09-07 23:56 · Score: 5, Insightful

Well WW says they have many unique points of similarity, but I find it hard to believe. Movies have so much less depth than books (and rpg systems and their backgrounds/settings/scenarios, etc). This movie claims to be vampire/werewolf/etc + Romeo & Juliet both of which are free game and open to anyone by now. How much more can there be to this movie that's outside those concepts? So another book combined the two at some later date, that doesn't mean a movie can't do the same using the same public domain stuff.