Epic Games Escaped Fortnite Dance Lawsuit Easily

The shooter Fortnite is still successful years after its launch and there is no end to its popularity. An essential part of the Epic Games game is the dances, which allow you to celebrate yourself and others. But is there a copyright on (virtual) dances? A court in the US is now investigating the question because Epic Games has been sued for Fortnite dance.

In particular, a choreographer named Kyle Hanagami accused the game company of copying a dance he had created. As PCGamesN reported, it’s about a dance Hanagami did for the music video for Charlie Puth’s song “How Long.” A similar or, according to the plaintiff, exactly the same emote is also in Fortnite, it is called in the popular shooter “It’s Complicated”. Hanagami believed Fortnite was violating its copyrights by letting Epic copy the character dance.

The prosecutor’s attorney, who has worked with the likes of Britney Spears and Nsync in the past, posted a video to YouTube that purported to show the similarities between real and virtual dancing. And indeed, there is no denying that the movements are similar, if not the same.

Not comparable enough

However, California district judge Stephen Wilson did not see it that way and dismissed the lawsuit. He felt that the two works didn’t have enough creative elements in common to consider Fortnite’s emote an injury. This is not the first time that Epic has been sued for copyright over an emote.

There have been several such lawsuits, including from “Prince of Bel-Air” actor Alfonso Ribeiro. However, many of these lawsuits were dropped after a US Supreme Court ruling ruled that such works must be protected before they can be sued.