The above quote is one of the most poignant soliloquies in film history, and many of you may recognize it from 1996’s Independence Day starring Will Smith and Bill Pullman. Well at least one person isn’t as stirred by these words as you and I. He is quite enraged. Veda Naik has been seething for nine years and he ain’t gonna take it no more. From Sify.com:

An NRI film scriptwriter has dragged Hollywood studio giant Twentieth Century Fox to the Supreme Court [Indian] for allegedly stealing his script to make the mega blockbuster Independence Day (ID).

Veda Naik has moved the apex court against a Karnataka High Court judgement refusing to direct the Los Angeles-based studio to pay damages for infringing the copyright of his film script Extra Terrestrial Mission (ETM).

Extra Terrestrial Mission (ETM)? Geez, with a name that bad it deserved to be stolen.

Naik, who earlier resided in Los Angeles, had registered his script in the name of NRI Associates in US Copyright Office in 1986, ten years before the release of ID.

He alleged that Fox, which registered the ID script in 1995, stole the ”basic plot, storyline and key dramatic elements” from his ETM while he promoted his script during his stay in Los Angeles during 1985-93 to produce a motion picture.

As he was interested in converting his screenplay into a motion picture, he had circulated the script among a number of producers, entertainment agents and lawyers who were also associated with Fox, he said.

The defendant studio used two proxy writers to convert ETM into ID by making alterations and modifications, he alleged, pointing to the direct involvement of the US President in the war against aliens and the concept of ”energy shield” among the many unique features that were taken from his script.

Here is what I think though. The aliens were eventually defeated by an Apple computer. In 1986 when this story was allegedly written by Naik, were Apple computers even that powerful? My Apple 2GS could not have taken down a mothership or I would have tried it for sure. I think Fox attorneys will jump all over this fact.