US: Steven Spielberg and major Hollywood studios stole the plot from Alfred Hitchcock's classic 1954 film Rear Windowin making last year's Disturbia, a lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court has said.
Dreamworks, its parent company Viacom and Universal Pictures, a unit of General Electric's NBC Universal, are accused of copyright infringement and breach of contract for making Disturbiawithout first obtaining permission from the copyright holders, the suit said.
Spielberg was the executive producer of the film, which starred Shia LaBeouf and Carrie-Anne Moss and grossed about $80 million (€56 million) at the US box office.
Spielberg is named as a defendant in the action.
According to the lawsuit, filed by the Sheldon Abend Revocable Trust, the basis for Hitchcock's 1954 film starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly was Murder from a Fixed Viewpoint, a short story by Cornell Woolrich.
Hitchcock and Stewart obtained the motion picture rights to the story in 1953.
The lawsuit argues that Dreamworks should have done the same.
"What the defendants have been unwilling to do openly, legitimately and legally, [they] have done surreptitiously, by their back-door use of the Rear Windowstory without paying compensation," the lawsuit said.
A spokesman for Spielberg declined to comment. Representatives of Viacom and NBC Universal were not available for comment.
According to the lawsuit, Disturbiaand the Rear Windowstory are "essentially the same".
Both are murder mysteries beginning with a man who, while peering from his window, witnesses strange behaviour in the home of his neighbour.
The protagonist in all three of the works behaves in essentially the same way, interacts with similar characters and the plot unfolds in basically the same way, the lawsuit said.
In reviewing Disturbia, the New York Timescalled it "a kind of adolescent Rear Window".
The Toronto Starcalled it "a rip-off with wit". - (Reuters)