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'Vanicorn' Lawsuit Filed over Pixar, Disney Film

By Scott Graham
March 01, 2020

San Francisco tattooist Sweet Cicely Daniher likes unicorns. She's authored a book about unicorn imagery. She's painted a unicorn mural on her '72 Chevy van that's been featured in San Francisco Magazine. "At the risk of belaboring the point," her attorneys wrote in a complaint that has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, "the plaintiff has had a real thing for unicorns, for a very long time, and they have been a central theme and subject matter of her artistic work, throughout the entirety of her career."

Now, Daniher alleges, Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group have tricked her into letting them use her "Vanicorn" in the upcoming film Onward. Her suit accuses the companies of copyright infringement, and violations of state and federal laws protecting artwork.

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