“I was going into hiatus on Rawhide, a three month layoff, and they said, well, we got this western we want to make in Europe. Italian company. Made in Spain. German co-production. About a $200,000 budget. And I said, I don’t think so. I‘d really rather take the time off. I got a job and I’m coming back to a job in a few months. And the guy said, well, I promised the Rome office that you‘d read it. I read it and recognized it right away as Yojimbo. So I thought, Yojimbo I thought it was great. I loved that movie. It was a conscious adaptation of Yojimbo. Though the Italians neglected to tell the Japanese they were doing this.”
—Clint Eastwood
Inside the Actors Studio interview with James Lipton
A Fistful of Dollars(1964)
Written by Adriano Bolzoni, Mark Lowell, Victor Addres Catena, Jamie Comas Gil, Sergio Leone
Yojimbo (1961)
Written by Akiri Kurosawa and Ryûzô Kikushima
But in this example, I think Kurosawa detected the plagiarism, sued and won a settlement.
I believe that is correct. That actually bugged me as I was writing it but I didn’t recall all the details. Let’s call it undetected plagiarism… just not for long. Good catch. It was settled out of court. According to Wikipedia, Sergio Leone’s defense was that he was also pulling from the westerns “Shane” and “My Darling Clementine,” and that Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo” was influenced by Dashiell Hammett’s novel “Red Harvest.” Apparently, plagiarism has many levels.