Copyright lawsuit – A San Diego screenwriter has filed a federal copyright infringement lawsuit claiming Mike White, Illumination Entertainment, and Universal Pictures lifted key elements from his 2007 script “South for the Winter” for the 2023 animated film “Migration.”
By the time the first email goes unanswered, the waiting starts to feel personal. For Kenneth Giavara, it has now taken a legal turn.
Giavara, a San Diego-based aspiring screenwriter, filed a federal copyright infringement lawsuit against Mike White, Illumination Entertainment and Universal Pictures. In the complaint. he argues that the 2023 animated film “Migration” was lifted from his screenplay “South for the Winter. ” which he wrote in 2007.
The lawsuit was filed Friday in the Central District of California. Giavara alleges that “Defendants brazenly have infringed upon and incorporated numerous [protectable] elements from ‘South for the Winter’ into ‘Migration. ’ including plot. sequence. characters. theme. dialogue. mood and setting.” He also claims the overlap is so strong that independent creation is unlikely. saying the “similarities between the movie ‘Migration’ and ‘South for the Winter’ are so substantial that it seems unlikely that the former could possibly have been created independently from the latter.”.
Giavara points to a set of shared story beats that, in his view, go beyond coincidence. Both projects, according to the complaint, follow an anthropomorphic bird family in New England with an overprotective father. Both include a kid who wants to see the world and a road trip migration that kicks off at a Central Park pond. The complaint further says both stories feature an older mentor bird and conclude with a tropical finish.
He also highlights a specific character detail: in Giavara’s script, the father is named Mac. In “Migration,” the father is named Mack.
The timeline Giavara lays out leans heavily on the idea that his work was already circulating long before “Migration” reached theaters. He says he registered the screenplay with the WGA in 2007 and entered it into multiple contests. He claims his efforts were rewarded when he won first place in the 2011 Fresh Voices competition—an outcome he says led to his screenplay being “distributed to hundreds if not thousands of companies and persons in the movie industry in Hollywood.”.
Giavara registered the screenplay with the U.S. Copyright Office in Dec. 2025. In the case, he is seeking damages, profits derived from “Migration,” and a writer’s credit on the film.
The filing arrives while another legal case remains active. The lawsuit “follows a separate, independently filed 2025 copyright lawsuit against the project that’s still active.”
A rep for Universal declined to comment. Reps for Illumination and Mike White did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
What makes this case land so hard for Giavara is the stakes he is explicitly asking the court to confront: money, recognition, and the question at the center of copyright disputes—whether the line between inspiration and copying was crossed.
Mike White Illumination Entertainment Universal Pictures Migration Migration copyright lawsuit Kenneth Giavara South for the Winter copyright infringement Central District of California Central Park pond WGA
So they stole it basically. Seems obvious.
I mean the bird family + road trip thing sounds kinda similar but movies do that all the time? Idk why the name Mack/Mac is the big smoking gun though.
Wait, Mike White wrote it? Like from Office Space? If Universal actually did that then wow. But also Central Park pond??? That’s like every New York kids movie setting lol. Still, getting sued is a legal turn for sure.
This is why aspiring screenwriters can’t catch a break. If he wrote in 2007 and it came out in 2023, that’s a long time but Hollywood always “forgets” stuff. Also I read somewhere the bird movie is about climate change or whatever so maybe that’s the real overlap? Not sure, but Mack/Mac sounds too close to me.