Friday Rundown: Disney Settles ‘Frozen’ Suit, Soon-Shiong’s Conkwest Raises $71 Million

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Walt Disney Co. has settled a lawsuit alleging copyright infringement involving the trailer for its 2013 animated hit “Frozen.”

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco issued an order on Wednesday dismissing the lawsuit. The court had been notified on June 10 that the Burbank entertainment and media giant had reached a settlement with independent filmmaker Kelly Wilson.

Terms of the settlement were confidential.

In April, Chhabria found that the case involved a factual dispute best left to a jury: whether Disney employees who created the “Frozen” trailer also had seen “The Snowman,” an animated short made by Wilson that screened at eight film festivals.

That was the second time that Chhabria ruled in Wilson’s favor. Last July, he rejected Disney’s motion to dismiss after finding that sequences from the trailer and the short film contained significant similarities.

“The Snowman” tells of the tale of the title character, who fears he has lost his carrot nose to a rabbit. The “Frozen” trailer featured snowman Olaf going up against a reindeer who wanted his carrot nose, which is not the film’s main plot line.

“Frozen,” released in November 2013, became the No. 1 original animated feature film ever with a domestic box-office gross of $400 million and worldwide gross of $1.2 billion.

Conkwest Raises $71 Million

Billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong’s clinical stage immunotherapy firm Conkwest Inc. just grabbed $71 million in equity funding from an unknown source, according to regulatory filings.

Soon-Shiong, L.A.’s richest man, recently became chief executive of the Cardiff-by-the-Sea firm, which is planning an initial public offering.

Soon-Shiong has also been keeping busy with his NantWorks health care technology company. The Culver City firm’s NantCell subsidiary announced earlier this week a deal to acquire a tissue and stem-cell engineering company in Italy.

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