Rex Martinich
An author who claimed Hollywood giant Disney lifted the plot of its latest Indiana Jones film from her book has failed to overturn her defeat in the copyright battle.
Daria Gomez Gane represented herself in the Queensland Court of Appeal on Thursday.
She argued a District Court judge was wrong in March this year to find Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny did not infringe on her copyright.
The judge made “factual errors” in failing to find parts of the 2023 film were “identical” to her 2021 novella The Michelangelo Dilemma: Secrets of Renaissance Time Travellers, Gane told the appeal justices.
Gane’s 4000-word, 21-page novella is available as a $9 e-book from Amazon.
“Because I’m the mother of the primary work so for me it’s like a newborn,” Gane said.
“I see them as a particular feature like the same bone structure.”
Gane claimed Disney had taken 13 original elements from her work such as the Ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes inventing a time-travel device and concealing it in his tomb.
“Archimedes’ tomb linked to time travel is unprecedented,” Gane said.
Indiana Jones used a circular dial to travel back in time while the book had artist Leonardo da Vinci using a formula inscribed on an octagonal tile, the justices heard.
The original judge had made an incorrect summary of her book including that it concerned only one time traveller versus a group of travellers in the film, the justices heard.
“The objective similarity has not been assessed,” Gane said.
Justice Thomas Bradley said it was “a ridiculous suggestion as a matter of law” to describe the use of a similar word in both book and film as copyright infringement.
Court of Appeal president Debra Mullins also questioned the claims relating to historical details.
“I don’t think Archimedes saying ‘eureka’ is original,” Justice Mullins said.
Walt Disney, which owns the Indiana Jones franchise through Lucasfilm, said any minor errors in the original judgment did not support claims the film had the same plot, characters or original ideas as the book.
“It’s just a bare concept that someone has time travel,” Chris Curtis, acting for The Walt Disney Company Australia, said.
Curtis said the book making one-word references to Syracuse and a vortex did not equate to a 20-minute sequence in the film with a modern aeroplane travelling back in time to the siege of Syracuse in 213 BC.
“Ultimately [the judge] accepted some similarity in plot ideas,” Curtis said.
“The film does not reproduce the structure of the book and they are just not substantially similar.”
In his final judgment before taking the role of Governor of Queensland, Justice Bradley dismissed Gane’s appeal.
“Most of [Ms Gane’s] examples of factual errors were pedantic criticisms, not clear errors,” Justice Bradley said.
Any similarities between the works were “commonplace stock ideas or plot elements that naturally and almost inevitably come with the subject or genre”, Justice Bradley said.
Justices Mullins and Martin Burns also agreed to dismiss the appeal.
AAP
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