From a reliable French source (or maybe a Fish sauce). This predates Nemo by a few years!
The story line Translated by google
Pierrot the clownfish lives happy with his/her parents and Rose,
their protective anemone... until the arrival of Liona rascasse.
Driven out by Rose, Liona was promised to be avenged and eat the clown family. Pierrot must show courage to escape to him.
Fortunately Pierrot is helped by nice fish which it meets
throughout its adventures.
With his new friends, it discovers that the life holds beautiful surprises for him...
(1) Similar rumour flowers with each new film of the firm. Walt Disney was itself victim into 1928 of an indelicate producer who adapted Oswald, its first character, a rabbit with the long ears which the draughtsman had omitted to deposit.
ranck Calvez, which dedicates a passion with the inhabitants of the aquariums, dreams one day of 1995 Pierrot the clownfish , scenario of cartoon film deposited with the SACD. It makes the turn of the houses of production. In vain. In 2000, it recycles its scenario delivers some for children, illustrated by Pascal André and his team of Cybervillage. Robin Delpuech and Thierry Jagodzinski end up being confined of a clownfish in 3 D, with human face, equipped with two large tender eyes. Become lawyer meanwhile, Franck Calvez invests his fees in the publisher Flaven Scène and leaves in November 2002, Pierrot the clownfish .
Similarities. The history is simple: Pierrot lives in an anemone with his/her parents, until the day when the life, which is bad girl even at the ocean floor, deprives it of its parents. Follows an initiatory course at the end which it finds his mother. The book is sold with thousand specimens. Thinking of marketing by-products, the editor deposits in February the clownfish not like character but like mark, at the national Institute of the patent rights. The aquariums of France require of him to study the creation of a cuddly toy.
Arrive spring 2003 and the Nemo tidal wave , its million witnesses, its hundreds of derived products. Calvez panics for its Pierrot. Advised by Pascal Kamina, lawyer specialized in the royalties, it writes in Disney to ask for details on the creation of Nemo , and especially on the policy of merchandising considered. Disney, for which the question of the royalties is since always delicate, addresses an end to him not-to receive. Calvez prepares a reprinting of its book. Fnac Junior would have verbally advised to him to improve the model, and to choose a hard-bound cover. Come September, the Counter of the book does not place any book at Fnac Junior. Explanation of a person in charge to the author:la chain programmed an operation with Disney Hachette for the exit of the World of Nemo, and Pierrot resembles to him too much. "There, I decided to react. I did not want that one prevents my fish from living ", known as Franck Calvez.
Calvez attacks on two faces: intellectual and industrial property, Pierrot being a character of fiction and a mark. The lawyer of the Editions Flaven Scène thus assigns Pixar, Disney and Disney Hachette, editor of the books, in front of the Court of Bankruptcy of Paris, for counterfeit of character and mark. He asks the prohibition of film and the derived products. A first audience, October 29, did not judge anything, lawsuit returned to February 17, and the quarrel around the artistic copyright can last of the months, even of the years. Too much long for Pierrot. "I want that my book lives" , repeats Franck Calvez, which seems to carry out, with his costs, the power of Pixar and Disney, and assists, dismayed, so that it had not imagined: "Considerable booksellers refuse to sell my book under pretext which it would be a plagiarism of Nemo. It is the world with back."
Before being made "swallow", Pierrot has another weapon: trade-mark law and the respect of the patent rights, in the name of what its editor could, in a few days, to lodge a summary procedure with the Court of Bankruptcy. It would ask for the seizure of all produced, diaries, objects, notebooks, clothing, with the effigy of Nemo . The court will appreciate.
Delicate context. For the hour, Disney reacts by rejecting any charge of plagiarism: Nemo is a creation, original to 100 %. a contracted attitude a chouïa, in a delicate context, at least for the American studio. Another possibility would be that Pixar and Disney compromise with the Editions Flaven Scène and the creators of Pierrot. Doesn't the rumour (1), persistent, want that at the time of King Lion , preceding planetary success of the firm, a transaction with friendly would have taken place between Disney and the Japanese Osamu Tezuka, creator in 1965 of King Léo , with whom the resemblance is more than disconcerting? The rumour, always insane, speaks about hundreds of thousands of dollars, but, not more than plagiarism, the figure was never proven.
