Copyright protection of fictional characters: A Fistful of Dollars v. Rango
03 Jul 2026
Italian Supreme Court, judgement of 1st May 2026
The Italian Supreme Court recently ruled on a dispute brought by the company Unidis Jolly Film S.r.l., the copyright owner of the western film “A Fistful of Dollars”, against the American film production company Paramount Pictures Corp. The dispute concerned the appearance, in a few scenes of the animated film “Rango” produced by Paramount, of a character named the “Spirit of the West” which, according to Unidis, constituted plagiarism of the character “The Man with No Name” appearing in “A Fistful of Dollars”.
The petition to the Supreme Court was filed by Unidis, which had seen its claims dismissed in both instances on the merits. However, the Supreme Court also deemed that the plaintiff’s claims were groundless and confirmed the ruling of the Rome Court of Appeal, according to which the character “The Man with No Name” does not enjoy copyright protection.
In this regard, during the proceedings on the merits it was established that “The Man with No Name” constituted a “non-transformative” adaptation of “prototypes known to literary and cinematic storytelling” and that it was not possible to find any “semantic gap between the character in question and models already delineated and acquired by artistic tradition”. Furthermore, it was noted that the character had been played in multiple films by the same actor, Clint Eastwood, making it even more difficult to claim that there was a “recognizable creative connotation” in the character, which ultimately became identified with the actor.
Based on the findings on the merits, the Supreme Court recalled the principle according to which a character can be protected as an independent work only if it shows a “characterization that makes the character itself recognizable as a typical creation”, and affirmed that such a condition does not exist in the case of “The Man with No Name”. Therefore, the claim of plagiarism brought by Unidis was again dismissed.
There is another interesting aspect in the dispute between Unidis and Paramount. Specifically, prior to the production of “Rango” Paramount informed Unidis of its intention to include the character of the “Spirit of the West” in the film, and requested a license for the exploitation of “The Man with No Name” (no license was granted, however). According to Unidis, this constituted an admission by Paramount that the character of the “Spirit of the West” was meant to reproduce the characteristics of “The Man with No Name”, and not those of Clint Eastwood.
Unfortunately, the Italian Supreme Court did not rule on this issue, and dismissed Unidis’ complaint on procedural grounds. It seems unlikely that the plaintiff’s argument could have overcome the finding that “The Man with No Name” does not qualify for copyright protection; however, it would have been useful to know the position of the Supreme Court on the matter.
Carmine Di Sanza
