Massachusetts man convicted of fraud over 'Kung Fu Panda' drawings, lawsuit

(Reuters) - A Massachusetts man was found guilty by a federal jury on Friday of back-dating drawings he relied on as evidence in his lawsuit against DreamWorks Animation that claimed he had invented the title character in the 2008 film "Kung Fu Panda." A federal jury in Boston convicted Jayme Gordon, 51, on four counts of wire fraud and three counts of perjury after prosecutors accused him of lying in a 2011 lawsuit against the Hollywood studio, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Massachusetts said in a statement. Prosecutors charged that Gordon back-dated drawings of a high-kicking bear named Po in 2008 after seeing an early trailer for the film, and then used them to try to extract a $12 million settlement from DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. Some of the drawings Gordon relied on had been traced from a coloring book featuring Walt Disney Co characters from the 1994 film "The Lion King," prosecutors said.