Love by the moonlight, mountainous terrain, a possible love interest that ends in betrayal and an unbreakable sisterly bond. These are common themes in many different stories on film, television and in books. Apparently Isabella Tanikumi also thought that they were reason enough to sue Disney for what she perceived as copyright infringement. Ms. Tanikumi claims that Disney’s Frozen is a copy of her book Yearnings of the Heart.

Disney’s Frozen highlights the lives of two girls living in Scandinavia and is inspired by Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Snow Queen”. Elsa, the older sister injures her younger sister Anna by accident during an argument with her magical cryokinetic powers, leaving Anna with a scar on her face. Their parents isolates Elsa from the world until she learns to control her powers. They then die in a shipwreck. When Elsa grows up she becomes queen and royalty from everywhere around comes to her coronation including Prince Hans who Anna falls in love with. When Anna asks to marry Hans Elsa refuses spawning another argument and Elsa displays her power. They flee and create a state of perpetual winter. When Anna and Elsa argue Anna is again accidentally injured and this time only an act of true love will be able to save her life. They return to Arendelle to find Hans and it turns out that Hans was only using Anna as part of a plot to take the throne from Elsa. He goes to kill Elsa and Anna stops him. This was the act of true love needed to save Anna’s life and the winter spell is lifted in Arendelle.

Yearnings of the Heart is an autobiographical work about a girl growing up in the mountains in Peru. Her family survives a major earthquake. She has a kitchen accident that scars her face and has an intense bond with her sister Laura who later dies in a car accident with a drunk driver. She falls in love with a man named Eduardo, but the love is unrequited. She eventually gets married to a TV producer and creates a family. She reconnects with Eduardo later and has an awkward meeting after which he removed her as a Facebook friend. Obviously Frozen is an exact copy of this tale… I think one of the book’s reviews on Amazon.com written by Mario Gonzalez says it best. “I won’t lie. I came to this book on the lowest possible prize I could find, expecting a yawn-inducing romp with some ice-thin similarities to ‘Frozen’ and was completely surprised by what I found. Turns out, it didn’t have any similarity to ‘Frozen’ whatsoever, except the highly generic one you can draw from pretty much any written work, such as ‘has women in it’, ‘happens on a planet’ and ‘there is water somewhere at some point’.”

Apparently the judge agreed with Mr. Gonzalez’s review and dismissed the case since copyright laws protect expression of ideas, not just an idea. The court held that the expression of those ideas was not substantially similar. Maybe this ruling will thaw the frost off the lenses through which the plaintiff viewed this case.