French court throws out Syriana plagarism case

A French court dismissed a suit against George Clooney and Warner Bros. filed by a French screenwriter who alleged that the movie Syriana was largely plagiarised from her script, court officials said today.

Stephanie Vergniault had claimed the oil-industry thriller borrowed “very largely” from a script she completed in 2002, but the judge in the case said two scripts were “obviously different.”

Like Syriana, Vergniault’s story line – titled Oversight – involved CIA intrigues with oil companies in the Persian Gulf, but the judge said overlap between the two scripts was coincidental.

He also noted that Vergniault, who was seeking €2m in damages, failed to provide proof that she sent her script to a Canadian company with close ties to Warner, as she had claimed.

The suit targeted Clooney’s film company, Section Eight, which he formed with director Steven Soderbergh, as well as Warner and Syriana’s writer-director Stephen Gaghan.

Vergniault will have to pay her opponents’ legal fees, the court officials said.