Canadian artist Damon Pourshian filed a lawsuit against Disney Pixar’s Inside Out saying the film infringes on a story he wrote in 1999 also titled Inside Out, which was turned into a short film a year later in 2000.
Pourshian claims his work has many similarities to Inside Out. The short movie also includes brain, heart, colon, stomach, and bladder as the main organ characters, and they communicate and argue with each other.
The suit goes on to say Pourshian created the script and film at Sheridan College, which has sent large numbers of its graduates to work at Disney and Pixar and is considered a ‘feeder’ school for Disney and Pixar. He later learned of the many connections between his alma mater, Sheridan College, and both Disney and Pixar, including a number of students who were at Sheridan College at the time his short film was shown and went on to work on Disney Pixar’s Inside Out.
A 2017 copyright infringement lawsuit brought against Inside Out last year by child development expert Denise Daniels was dismissed last month wherein Daniels claimed the film bore a striking resemblance to a TV project, The Moodsters, she’d developed and pitched numerous times to Disney executives between 2006 and 2009.
The suit seeks unspecified damages as well as Pourshian’s name being added to the feature film’s credits.