Legal fight starts over Raging Bull copyright
The boxing movie Raging Bull may have come out 33 years ago, but a copyright fight over an early screenplay has found its way to the US Supreme Court. The court agreed on Tuesday to take up the case brought by Paula Petrella, daughter of the deceased screenwriter Frank Petrella.
The boxing movie Raging Bull may have come out 33 years ago, but a copyright fight over an early screenplay has found its way to the US Supreme Court.
She says MGM Holdings and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment have infringed the copyright of a 1963 screenplay upon which she alleges the 1980 movie was based.
Fox is named as a defendant because it has the rights to distribute MGM movies on DVD.
The acclaimed film about the life of champion boxer Jake LaMotta starred Robert De Niro and was directed by Martin Scorsese. It won two Oscars in 1981, including the best actor award for De Niro. Petrella inherited the rights to the screenplay upon her father's death in 1981.
She renewed the copyright in 1991 after hearing about a 1990 Supreme Court decision in which the court ruled in favour of the copyright holder of a magazine article upon which the Alfred Hitchcock classic Rear Window was based.