charlie d
Posts: 56
Joined: Oct. 2002
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I think it's quite obvious that there is sufficiently close resemblance between the Expelled and XVIVO animations for a copyright infringement case to proceed, if XVIVO and/or Harvard decide to sue after the movie comes out. That of course assumes that the Expelled producers will not argue some exception like "fair use" or minor use, etc, or the judge will reject such arguments. I am not sure the Expelled producers would do that though, since those arguments would belie their current claim that the animations are original, and while their actions would be legal, it would be pretty much an admission of plagiarism - copying someone else's work without attribution. Thus they may end up in the clear financially, but with rather rotten eggs on their faces ethically.
If the case goes to court, the process of discovery will easily do the rest: if the Expelled animations were worked out from scientific scratch, there will be, necessarily, tons of evidence for it. There will be notes and e-mails of discussions between animators and actual biologists, the biologists' own notes, the evidence of 3D modeling from existing protein structures and cell microscopy (e.g. confocal, SEM and TE) data in the literature and databases, and so on. If not, not.
At this stage, any firm conclusion from any of us is premature. All we know is that the Expelled people say their animators' work is original, while the XVIVO people have reason to believe it can't be, and the Expelled animators must have copied "Inner life" (whether or not under specific instructions from the producers also remains to be seen, if and when responsibility and damages are assessed).
That's it, so we can all just chill out. I suspect we will know soon enough.
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