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James Cameron has won another lawsuit alleging he stole ideas for Avatar.
Artist William Roger Dean alleged Cameron ripped off 14 of his paintings for the 2009 sci-fi epic, and was seeking damages from Cameron, Avatar studio 20th Century Fox and Cameron’s production company Lightstorm Entertainment. He claimed Cameron stole aspects of Avatar planet Pandora, including its biosphere and several of its alien creatures.
But on Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Jesse M. Furman dismissed the suit, which was being heard in New York.
Furman called several of Dean’s claims “misguided,” noting that as evidence, the artist included images from “books about or derived from Avatar” rather than the film. The judge also noted that images from the film were cropped, rotated and otherwise taken “out of context” in an attempt to make them look similar to Dean’s paintings, which were in turn also manipulated by the artist.
Cameron previously won multiple Avatar idea theft cases, including one brought by a man who claimed the film ripped off one of his short stories and an artist who also alleged his work inspired the film.
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