John Lewis has won a court battle after a children’s author claimed the retailer had copied one of her designs for a Christmas advert.

Fay Evans, a self-published author from Macclesfield, Cheshire, claimed the company’s two-and-a-half minute “Excitable Edgar” advert which was aired in 2019 bore “striking” resemblances to her own work “Fred The Fire-Sneezing Dragon”.

She sued John Lewis as well as creative agency adam&eveDDB, which first developed the Christmas advert concept.

But a High Court judge on Monday dismissed her claim and ordered Ms Evans to publish the outcome on her website, which she previously used to publicise the row.

In a 40-page ruling which at one point discussed the mythological origins of dragons, Her Honour Judge Clarke found there had been no copyright breach and there “was not a scrap of evidence” that John Lewis or its agencies had seen Ms Evans’ story before the legal battle started.

“I am satisfied on the balance of probabilities that… there can have been no copying,” she added.

The John Lewis advert first aired in November 2019 and Ms Evans was quick to suggest on social media that it had been copied from her own story.

Both stories feature friendly dragons who live in human worlds and initially struggle to fit in because of their fire-breathing abilities.

For example, in the John Lewis advert, Edgar gets excited and accidentally melts a snowman being built by two children; reduces a Christmas tree to a cinder; and melts an ice rink that people are skating on.

Later, he finds his calling when a little girl gives him a Christmas pudding which he brings to a village banquet and sets ablaze to cheers from all.

Ms Evans’ rhyming story, meanwhile, features a sneezing dragon called Fred who similarly cannot control his fiery outbursts at school.

He struggles until he is encouraged to use his power to cook meals for fellow pupils.

Although Judge Clarke accepted both stories were, at their base, about “a friendly dragon which finds it difficult to control its fire”, she pointed out that an outline for the John Lewis advert was first drawn up in 2016 – before Ms Evans’ book was published in 2017.

Lawyers for Ms Evans accepted this in court but attempted to argue that other elements not in the 2016 outline had breached her copyright regardless.

John Lewis maintained there were “numerous and substantial differences” and that there was no basis for claiming staff or agency workers had seen Ms Evans’ book owing to its “limited sales”.