LOS ANGELES (CNN) — A company that says it produced videos about a cursing teddy bear fond of prostitutes is suing Seth MacFarlane over his “Ted” movie.
“Ted” is “strikingly similar” to “Charlie the Abusive Teddy Bear,” Bengal Mangle Productions contends in a copyright infringement lawsuit filed Wednesday.
“Charlie is a teddy bear who lives in a human, adult world with all human friends,” the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles said. “Charlie has a penchant for drinking, smoking, prostitutes, and is a generally vulgar yet humorous character.”
Their copyrighted vulgar bear was featured in videos on YouTube and FunnyorDie.com in 2009, three years before MacFarlane’s “Ted” hit theaters, earning $549 million at the box office worldwide, the complaint said.
“Ted” copies “Charlie’s” background story, persona, voice tone, attitude and dialogue, the suit said. The two bears’ Twitter postings were even similar, it said, giving a long list of comparisons including:
“Charlie” tweeted on March 7, 2009: “I have a life mission and it is to drink.”
“Ted” tweeted on April 4, 2012: “I drink on Tuesday night to celebrate the fact that it ain’t Monday night.”
Both bears are “‘washed-up’ child stars/public personas” and “both Charlie and Ted spend a significant amount of time sitting on a living room couch with a beer and/or cigarette in hand,” the lawsuit contends.
MacFarlane and Universal Pictures, which also is named as a defendant, did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.
CNN’s Lorenza Brascia contributed to this report.
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