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TO ME, MY LITIGATORS: Eyebrows raised recently when a Florida man sued Marvel, Fox, Saban Entertainment, and many other production companies saying that the generation-defining theme song of the ’90s X-Men animated show actually plagiarized a strikingly similar theme of a popular Hungarian tv show from the 1980s. Nerd Law man, Andrew, and X-Men fanatic, D. Bethel, put their heads together to see if this case has any legs to stand on. (A big thanks to friend-of-the-show, André La Roche for his consultation on this topic.)

DISNEY PEMDAS: Last week, Disney made waves as it began an irresponsibly long Twitter thread announcing every title that would be available on its upcoming Disney+ service. D. Bethel and Andrew sort through the announcement, talking about how much this will shift the paradigm of entertainment consumption.

RELEVANT LINKS:

• Alexander, Leigh. “Report: Konami Didn’t Use Metal Gear Solid Theme In MGS4 Due to Plagiarism Accusations.” Gamasutra. Informa, 12 December 20018.
• Leight, Elias. “Vinyl Is Poised to Outsell CDs For the First Time Since 1986.” Rolling Stone. Penske Business Media, 06 September 2019.
• Lovett, Jamie. “Marvel Sued For Allegedly Stealing X-Men: The Animated Series Theme Song.” Comic Book. CBS Interactive, 09 October 2019.
• Zoltan Krisko’s complaint against Marvel, et al.
• “This 80’s Song Inspired Mario’s Music.” YouTube, uploaded by Thomas Game Docs, 20 May 2019.

RELEVANT EPISODES:

• Shortcast 03 – Interview with André La Roche (31 December 2014): the episode that featured our nerd legal consultant for this episode.
• New Dangers (20 September 2019): Our most recent episode talking about Disney and its strange machinations.

INFO:

• Visit our website at forallintents.net and leave your thoughts as comments on the page for this episode.
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FEATURED MUSIC:

• “Disco Medusae” by Kevin McLeod
  • Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3652-disco-medusae
• “District Four” by Kevin McLeod
  • Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3662-district-four
• Tracks are licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

• “Nerd Law” by D. Bethel