Sophia Stewart

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Sophia Stewart (aka Zenia Kavala) is the author of a work titled The Third Eye by Sophia Stewart. In May 1981 she registered the manuscript with the United States Copyright Office (TXu 117-610) on February 2, 1983 [1]. Additional work was registered on February 6, 1984 (TXu-154-281) consisting of a narrative, preface, introductions, 8 brief chapters, and illustrations. Stewart claims this work has been creatively infringed upon by the movie series The Matrix and Terminator, and has taken legal action. Stewart asserts that "these two franchises are owned by the same people or movie house".[2]

In the original copyright registration for The Third Eye and letters from the author, Stewart uses Sofia, and uses both Sophia and Sofia in real life. She says they both mean the same.

[edit] Litigation

A complaint was filed by Stewart against Larry Wachowski and Andy Wachowski, Warner Brothers, and Joel Silver, (responsible for The Matrix and its sequels/spinoffs) and Gale Ann Hurd, James Cameron, Hemdale Films and 20th Century Fox (responsible for Terminator and its sequels) in the United States District Court for the Central District of California on April 24, 2003 [3][4]. In the complaint, damages are sought for relief from the results of copyright infringement, RICO violations, and supplemental state claims.

On October 4, 2004, the court granted her leave to continue the case against the accused. [5]. This particular case has since been dismissed:

Stewart's case was dismissed in June 2005 when she failed to show up for a preliminary hearing of her case. In a 53-page ruling, Judge Margaret Morrow of the Central District Court of California dismissed the suit, saying Stewart and her attorneys had not entered any evidence to bolster its key claims or demonstrated any striking similarity between her work and the accused directors' films. As of this writing, Stewart's case is no longer before the courts. She has announced that she does not plan to let the matter drop, so possibly this case will someday be re-filed and heard, but for now it is over.

—Snopes.com [6]