Story highlights The film is up for a best picture Oscar

Studio said in a statement the suit has no merit

(CNN) One of the Oscar frontrunners has been slapped with a copyright infringement lawsuit.

David Zindel is alleging the creators behind "The Shape of Water" plagiarized the play "Let Me Hear You Whisper," which was written by his late father, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paul Zindel.

According to the suit, the 1969 play "tells the story of a lonely janitorial cleaning woman who works the graveyard shift at a scientific laboratory facility that performs animal experiments for military use."

"She becomes fascinated by a fantastic intelligent aquatic creature, held captive in a glass tank," the suit states. "To the sounds of romantic vintage music playing on a record player, she forms a deep, loving bond with the creature, discovering that it can communicate -- but chooses to do so only with her."

"The Shape of Water" stars Sally Hawkins and Octavia Spencer in what Fox Searchlight calls "an other-worldly fable, set against the backdrop of Cold War era America circa 1962."

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