Northern California Man Claims to Have Created SpongeBob SquarePants

In a suit filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, 40-year-old Troy Walker claims to have been the creator of the original SpongeBob SquarePants. Walker's claim is that he created Bob Spongee, an unemployed sponge who lived on Apple Street, in 1991. When he saw SpongeBob SquarePants on Nickelodeon in 2002, a sponge who lives in a pineapple in the underwater town of Bikini Bottom, he saw too many similarities.

The suit Walker filed is against Nickelodeon, Viacom, Inc., Paramount Studios and Stephen Hillenburg, SpongeBob's creator. In it he demands $1.6 billion in damages and alleges that the defendants used his idea without his permission. "They took all of it," Walker said.

In his suit, Walker alleges he created the character of Bob Spongee, the Unemployed Sponge, during the early 1990s. He claims to have made over 1,000 Bob Spongee dolls which he sold in Northern California. He believes that it was these dolls that inspired the producers of the show to create SpongeBob - a duplicate of his character. He also states that he has kept ads that he ran in The Oakland Tribune for the doll he created.

Walker points the pilot episode of the popular cartoon, entitled "Help Wanted" (in which an unemployed SpongeBob gets his job at the Krusty Krab) as proof that the defendants stole his idea. "It is more than ironic that two working class sponges are named Bob," Walker says in his complaint. "Both characters are unemployed. Both characters live in a house concept."

A spokeswoman at Nickelodeon said that "Walker's claim is baseless," and attorneys for Viacom (Nickelodeon's parent company) stated in court documents that Hillenburg's SpongeBob SquarePants is very different from Walker's Bob Spongee.

The show is no stranger to controversy. In January 2005, James Dobson, psychologist and chairman of Focus on the Family, accused SpongeBob SquarePants of having a "homosexual agenda." This accusation has focused mainly around the episode "Rock-a-Bye Bivalve" in which SpongeBob and his friend Patrick Star become "same-sex" parents to raise an orphaned baby scallop. (The episode was never shown in many countries due to this perceived content.) Creator Stephen Hillenburg has repudiated claims that SpongeBob is homosexual, stating that SpongeBob "is, in fact, almost asexual, as he is a sponge."

SpongeBob SquarePants debuted on Nickelodeon May 1, 1999 and was an instant hit. SpongeBob's popularity intensified in 2004 when SpongeBob SquarePants: The Movie was released. The film earned $85.4 million in the United States and $140.1 million worldwide.