Judge clears Spielberg in Disturbia lawsuit

A judge has cleared Steven Spielberg of stealing the plot for Disturbia from a short story.

Although the two films definitely share similarities - both are about someone who is confined to his home and becomes convinced that his neighbour is a killer - New York district court judge Laura Taylor Swan ruled that "the main plots are similar only at a high, unprotectable level of generality".

The suit was launched by the Sheldon Abend Revocable Trust, which manages the estate of the late author Cornell Woolrich. The writer's short story It Had to be Murder formed the basis for Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954).

The trust filed its complaint against Spielberg, DreamWorks and distributors Paramount Pictures back in 2008 and claimed that the short story's plot had been used without obtaining the Trust's permission.

But Swan added: "Where Disturbia is rife with sub-plots, the short story has none. The setting and mood of the short story are static and tense, whereas the setting and mood of Disturbia are more dynamic and peppered with humour and teen romance."