Bandung's Rabbit Town theme park slapped with copyright lawsuit

Los Angeles-based Chris Burden Estate is suing Bandung’s commercial theme park Rabbit Town for copying the former’s installation. Rabbit Town, known to many as "a selfie haven", is now being accused of plagiarising late artist Chris Burden’s “Urban Light” art installation in Los Angeles. “Urban Light” is made up of over 200 street lamps, while Rabbit Town’s “Love Light” art installation is a work of 88 light pillars. "Urban Light" has made a cameo in Hollywood movies such as No Strings Attached and Valentine's Day.

According to Yayoi Shionoiri, executive director at the Chris Burden estate in an Instagram post, copyright is a critical tool to protect an artist's legacy. She added that Rabbit Town did not ask for permission to copy “Urban Light”, and explained that the theme park also “copied the look and feel of rooms by Museum of Ice Cream”. In the same Instagram post, she posted a picture of “Urban Light” and “Love Light” to show how uncanny both installations look. Burden's "Urban Light" won him several praise and was created in 2008.

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Rabbit Town was opened to public in 2018, and apart from “Love Light”, has several art installations and exhibitions to draw tourists. Two of the installations at Rabbit Town which features hanging Ice Cream cones and coloured bananas dons a striking resemblance to the concept at Los Angeles-based Museum of Ice Cream. The Chris Burden Estate hired Indonesian law firm Ivan Almaida Baely & Firmansyah (IABF) to proceed with the lawsuit against Rabbit Town. Marketing Interactive has reached out to the Chris Burden Estate for more information.

A copyright infringement lawsuit is not uncommon. Earlier in February 2020, an artist based in San Francisco by the name of Sweet Cicely Daniher sued the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, Pixar Animation Studios and Onward producer Kori Rae for creating an animated version of her unicorn van without permission. Onward is an animated film by Disney and Pixar, that released in cinemas in March 2020. Reported first on Hollywood Reporter, in a court filing, Daniher said that Pixar had contacted her previously to loan her "vanicorn" for a one day event for its employees, and will only be used as a "show piece". The van with unicorns have been a "central theme and subject matter" of Daniher's work, and was similar to the animated van called "Guinevere" in Onward.

Meanwhile, sometime in May 2019, DC Comics lost a copyright infringement lawsuit over the name of its iconic superhero, Superman to a food and beverage company based in Surabaya, according to several news outlets.  The company based in Surabaya, Marxing Fam Makmur, is said to hold the intellectual property rights, having registered its trademark in 1993 and renewed it when necessary. In April 2018, DC Comics filed the lawsuit with the argument that Marxing had acted in bad faith in registering the trademark of a brand well-known globally without permission, according to various media reports. An appeal by DC Comics against the lawsuit outcome was allegedly also rejected by the Supreme Court in Indonesia for being blurry and unclear. 

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