The 1990 fight over ownership of the Ewoks

They were memorable characters in Return of the Jedi. But who could claim ownership of the fuzzy defenders of the planet Endor?  

In January 1990, a battle was underway in a Calgary courtroom that pitted a Hollywood producer against an Alberta  screenwriter.

"They're small and furry and they're the subject of a $150-million court battle," said Peter Mansbridge, host of CBC's The National. "They're Ewoks, fictitious characters that appeared in Return of the Jedi — one of the movies in the Star Wars trilogy."

Back then there were just three Star Wars movies. That universe has since expanded considerably. 

'The price of success'

Two men claimed they created the Ewoks: George Lucas, the producer of Star Wars, and Calgary's Dean Preston.

Both believed the force was with them, although Preston was saving his arguments for the judge.

"No comment right now," he told CBC reporter Kevin Newman.

Lucas, a "big-time Hollywood producer" who had arrived at court in a limousine, had more to say. 

"You get a lot of these," he told a throng of reporters. "It's the price of success, I guess." 

For the benefit of the CBC viewers who had somehow remained ignorant of what, exactly, Ewoks looked like, a clip from 20th Century Fox's 1983 movie Return of the Jedi was shown.

Evolved from Wookiees

"They're arguing over Ewoks, small teddy bear-like creatures created for Lucas's final Star Wars movie," said Newman.

Newman paraphrased Lucas's testimony, which was that the Ewoks were "evolved from Wookiees — larger furry creatures that appeared in earlier films."

Preston testified that he had invented Ewoks in a script — called Space Pets, according to another report — that he had sent to Lucas five years before the movie's release. But Lucas testified he never saw the script, said Newman. (Separate reporting on the lawsuit by other news outlets also indicated the filmmaker's staff sent all unsolicited material back to the sender and it was not shown to Lucas, as per a policy to protect him from potential lawsuits.)

And then there was this strange exchange between Preston's lawyer, Webster MacDonald, and Lucas:

Q. Are you telling us Ewoks are the same as Wookiees?

A. I'm not saying they're the same. They evolved from Wookiees.

Q. There's no difference between an eight-foot, 200-pound animal and a small one?

A. There are similarities. They're both aliens.

MacDonald told Newman his client was willing to give up ownership of the Ewoks and settle the case for $150 million. 

"Mind you, I think he'd probably be satisfied with less than that," added MacDonald.

The Sam Spade precedent

The Sam Spade argument

35 years ago

Duration 2:20

Are Ewoks standalone characters, or is their significance specific only to Return of the Jedi?

The case wrapped up on Jan. 26, 1990. In Calgary, local reporter Bruce Leslie summed it up for viewers.

"Movie mogul George Lucas argued the alien teddy bears were a collaboration of his people at Lucas Films," said Leslie.

In addition, he reported, lawyers for both sides had invoked a previous character copyright case, in the United States, involving the Warner Bros. studio and private eye Sam Spade. 

Spade was a creation of writer Dashiell Hammet who appeared in his story The Maltese Falcon. When Warner Bros. bought the story for a movie of the same name starring Humphrey Bogart, it considered Spade its property.

"The judge ruled Spade was only a chessman in the plot of the movie, and was not protected under copyright," said Leslie.

'Fuzzy aliens' were nothing new

What was crucial for both sides was whether the Ewoks in Preston's script were developed enough to stand on their own as characters, as Spade had been, or not.

"Were the Ewoks sufficiently delineated so that they belong to my client?" asked MacDonald, summing up what the judge would have to decide.

It turns out the Ewoks were just the latest in "fuzzy aliens," as Leslie's report showed.

"As furry space creatures go, there is really nothing new under the sun," he said, as viewers saw illustrations of fictional creatures depicted in a previously published book.  

In November 1990, the Globe and Mail reported that a federal court judge had dismissed Preston's claim of Ewok ownership. Preston was also ordered to pay Lucas's court costs.