Fortnite: Another dance lawsuit dismissed in the USA
Epic Games is happily being sued for using popular dances as emotes in Fortnite.
And again, such a dance lawsuit has now been dismissed by a US judge.
Who sued?
The lawsuit was filed in March 2022 by choreographer Kyle Hanagami. It was about a dance called “It’s Complicated”.
Hanagami accused Epic of “unfairly exploiting it [seiner] protected choreography”.
Hanagami wanted to prevent Epic from further using, selling or displaying the dance in Fortnite. He also demanded damages and the assumption of further costs and fees by Epic.
Why was the lawsuit dismissed?
According to Central District of California Judge Stephen V. Wilson, the two works “do not share enough creative elements for Fortnite’s emote to constitute copyright infringement.”
You can see how similar the dance and hanagami and the emote in Fortnite are in this video:
There have been a number of dance lawsuits against Epic in the past. In 2019, musician Leo Pellegrino accused the company of improperly using his appearance for the “Phone It In” emote in Fortnite.
Another lawsuit came from actor Alfonso Ribeiro (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air), who accused Epic of stealing the Carlton dance.
Was this the last dance lawsuit against Epic? Probably not. Maybe we should do that with dance battles in the future.
Reference-www.eurogamer.de