James Cameron sued by British artist over Avatar for $50m

James Cameron has been sued by British artist, Roger Dean, for 50 million dollars over claims that the Hollywood director copied his ideas for the 3D film Avatar, which won three technical awards at the Oscars.

Dean has filed a legal action at a court in New York last week, while accusing Cameron of "wilful and deliberate copying, dissemination and exploitation" of his original images, the BBC reported.

In the legal action, the British artist- described in the papers as "an international artist and designer, whose evocative and visionary images created a new genre of work"- has claimed that the 58-year-old filmmaker had "studied and referenced his art in preparation for the film".

Dean, who graduated from the Royal College of Art, in London, in 1968, also asserted that, in particular, his paintings of floating islands and huge graceful arches in the sky, painted over the course of 40 years, were copied by Cameron.

He also pinpointed the similarities between the Tree of Life and the Home Tree of Avatar's fictional alien race the Na'vi, and his works Pathway and Floating Jungle.