'Knocked Up' a Knock Off?

Same title? Check. Booze-inspired one night stand that results in pregnancy? Check. Protagonist who is also an ambitious journalist? Check. Father with Jewish background? Check. The similarities are all there according to Calgary-based author Rebecca Eckler, who claims that the makers of the hit comedy Knocked Up, which earned almost $30 million when it opened this past weekend, stole her idea and now she's suing writer/director Judd Apatow and Universal. In 2004, Eckler wrote a memoir about her accidental pregnancy, called Knocked Up: Confessions of a Hip Mother to Be, and claims that her book was the unacknowledged inspiration for the film in Canada's Macleans magazine. She even suggests that the art from her book and the cover of Apatow's screenplay were the same, which she describes in a conversation she had with a producer who wanted to option her memoir:

One Los Angeles producer was consistently persistent. He was a real producer, with actual projects under his belt. Over the past two years, I've talked to him numerous times about how to go about selling my baby -- the book. Last summer he called and told me, "There's a movie coming out called Knocked Up." I know, I told him. I had seen a mention of it in Us Weekly.

"What did the cover of your book look like again?" he asked. "It was a martini glass with a baby soother around the stem," I told him. "You are not going to believe this. I just saw the front page of the screenplay. You are not going to believe what the picture is," he said.

"What?" I asked, feeling my heart sink.

"It's a martini glass with a soother around the stem. I'll fax it over."

And he did. "What do I do?" I asked him when I got the fax.

"Get a lawyer," he said.

Her piece goes on to descibe the problems she's had with her suit and her battle with the studio. I guess that's to be expected. Claims of idea theft are extremely common in Hollywood and tough to prove. For example, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Matrix, The Last Samurai, Amistad, and The Da Vinci Code were all challenged with lawsuits. Most cases never reach a jury's ears, attorney Aaron Moss, who specializes in creative-rights law, told MSNBC this past year. "The vast, vast, vast majority of these cases tend to settle. There's never an admission of liability. It's settled quietly outside of court."