Film and TV studio Alcon Entertainment sued Tesla and Warner Bros. Discovery on Monday, accusing them of using images related to the movie “Blade Runner 2049” to promote Tesla’s new self-driving taxis.
Alcon’s federal lawsuit in California accuses it of violating U.S. copyright law and accuses Tesla of “false endorsements” that suggested a relationship between Alcon and Elon Musk’s electric car maker.
“Any prudent brand considering a partnership with Tesla must take into account Musk’s massively amplified, highly politicized, erratic and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech,” the lawsuit states.
Tesla and Warner Bros. did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Warner Bros. is the distributor of Alcon’s Blade Runner 2049, which won two Academy Awards in 2018 and stars Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford in the highly anticipated sequel to the 1982 cult classic Blade Runner.
Alcon said it rejected a request from Warner Bros. to use the company’s images during Tesla’s Oct. 10 live-streamed unveiling of its network of taxis. Tesla then used artificial intelligence (AI) to create images that reflected the film’s online taxi activity, the lawsuit alleges.
Alcon said in a statement that the defendants’ conduct could cause disruption to Alcon’s “Blade Runner” brand partner customers, including those working with the upcoming “Blade Runner 2099” series on Amazon Prime.
The lawsuit did not specify specific losses, but said Alcon spent hundreds of millions of dollars building the “Blade Runner 2049” brand and said the “financial scale of misappropriation is enormous.”
© Thomson Reuters 2024
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