Do you remember The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air? Well if you do, you'll remember the famous scene where character Carlton Banks (played by Alfonso Ribeiro) does a now-iconic dance to Tom Jones' song It's Not Unusual. His dance moves have become so famous that even after all these years we still know where it's from, and Epic Games has even made it an emote in Fortnite.
This hasn't impressed Ribeiro though, who has decided to sue Epic Games, claiming intellectual property on the Carlton Dance, as reported by TMZ. The same report claims that he's in the middle of trying to copyright the dance as we speak, which was added to Fortnite in January of this year under the name of Fresh.
Ribeiro's attorney, David Hecht of Pierce Bainbridge Beck Price & Hecht LLP, also provided the following statement to TMZ:
"It is widely recognized that Mr. Ribeiro's likeness and intellectual property have been misappropriated by Epic Games in the most popular video game currently in the world, Fortnite."
"Epic has earned record profits off of downloadable content in the game, including emotes like 'Fresh.' Yet Epic has failed to compensate or even ask permission from Mr. Ribeiro for the use of his likeness and iconic intellectual property."
This is just one of many recent reports of celebrities being displeased with emotes in Fortnite, as rapper 2 Milly is suing the studio for the same reason after they used his dance Milly Rock (called Swipe It in the game), and Scrubs actor Donald Faison has also criticised the way Epic Games uses these emotes, as they used the dance from his character Turk as the default one in-game.
At the moment Epic hasn't yet replied, but it's clear that there's an increasing amount of dissatisfaction with Fortnite selling these emotes without permission from the original creators, as has been discussed by figures like Chance the Rapper earlier this year.
Will we see more lawsuits next year?