Angelina Jolie wins lawsuit for alleged plagiarism

Angelina Jolie

American actress Angelina Jolie won a lawsuit after being accused of appropriating the work of a Croatian journalist to create the film “In the land of blood and honey”. The artist was sued weeks before the film’s release in U.S. theaters in late 2011.

James J. Braddock, whose real name is Josip J. Knezevic claimed that Jolie’s work (a love story during the Bosnian civil war), violated the copyright of his book “The Soul Shattering.”

According to Braddock, Edin Sarkic, one of the film’s producers and who also helped Jolie to get permission to film in Sarajevo, read his work and had begun talks to film an adaptation of the book. However, according to the decision taken this weekend by Judge Dolly Gee, District of California, the two works are not substantially similar.

Braddock’s book, “Duse Slamanje” was published in 2007 and has an English summary entitled “The Soul Shattering”.

The judge indicated that Jolie’s film “is primarily a story of betrayal, revenge and tragedy with little or no hope at all, while ‘Slamanje Duse’ focuses on family, love and strength.”

The judge indicated that Jolie’s film “is primarily a story of betrayal, revenge and tragedy with little or no hope, while ‘Slamanje Duse’ focuses on family, love and strength.”