Apparently, this author does not believe in letting it go like they teach us in Frozen. An author who claims that Disney stole her story about growing up in the not-so-frozen Peru to form the basis of Frozen seeks to revive her $250 million copyright infringement claim.

We need to start with an important premise, Frozen, well Disney claims, is based off of an 1844 Hans-Christian Andersen book, The Snow Queen, that has long fallen into the public domain. This means that any person can use the characters and story to create a book or even a movie. One pro se plaintiff doesn’t believe Disney’s story but claims that Disney ripped off her book.

In 2014, Isabella Tanikumi, representing herself, filed a lawsuit against Disney claiming that her book, Yearnings of the Heart, formed the basis of the hit Disney movie. Yearnings of the Heart, oh man that is ripe for a Lifetime movie, tells the story of the author’s life born in the mountains of Peru, surviving a devastating earthquake, suffering a kitchen accident that scars her face, and then enduring the tragic death of her sister by a drunk driver. Tanikumi then moved to the United States, had plastic surgery to fix her scars, fell in love with someone who didn’t feel the same way, got married to someone else and then reconnected with her first love on Facebook to only have an awkward meeting.

Sounds just like the story of Frozen, right? The judge didn’t think so either finding that the two stories were not substantially similar. The closest similarity the judge could find was the theme of intense sisterly love…now you know why the plaintiff was representing herself.

Well this bad loss had no effect on the plaintiff. Last week, she sought to revive her $250 million copyright infringement case by filing a notice of appeal to the Third Circuit. It could get worse for the plaintiff because as the loser of the case, Disney can seek recovery of its attorneys’ fees. Sometimes you just need to…let it go.

Interested in Frozen? Click here for an earlier story about a lawsuit claiming that Olaf was stolen from another movie.



