Copycat cartoon ordered by court to pay penalty

A Shanghai Pudong district court sentenced two Chinese companies to pay 1.35 million yuan ($194,500) to two Hollywood studios on Thursday for infringing on their copyrighted material.

On July 4, 2015, The Autobots, a Chinese animated film produced by Xiamen-based Bluemtv and distributed by Beijing G-Point Film Culture Media Co, was released. It generated an instant backlash when Chinese moviegoers found the film's title, poster and main characters to be eerily similar to Cars and its sequel, produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. Many Chinese parents wrote online that they had been tricked into buying tickets to The Autobots because they thought they were for screenings of Cars.

The court, after comparing the movies, determined that the images of K1 and K2, of The Autobots, violated the copyright of the movies from the United States because they resembled the main characters in the Cars franchise in the personified facial portrayals. But the two posters had sufficient differences in composition and background to not add to the offense.