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Little Resemblance: Los Angeles actor-writer Benjamin Stein recently filed a lawsuit against Carl Karcher Enterprises that claims the character in a new television commercial for Carl’s Jr. restaurants is a rip-off of the deadpan schoolteacher that Stein developed.

Whether the characters act alike will have to be decided by the courts. One thing is pretty clear, however. Stein and the Carl’s Jr. character do not look alike. Stein might have a better case if he put on a few pounds and a few years.

Stein, a former Nixon speech writer, created the schoolteacher character for the hit movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” and he appears regularly as a teacher on the popular television show “The Wonder Years.”

Anaheim-based Carl Karcher Enterprises is not commenting on the suit, which was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Sept. 17. Stein is seeking unspecified damages and an injunction barring the commercial from the airwaves.

Stein says Karcher is robbing him of a way of making a living by copying the character. The 30-second commercial promotes Carl’s Jr. Happy Star Meals.

But isn’t the boring, bespectacled schoolteacher a standard character, open to interpretation by any number of actors? Stein says that is true, but that the particularly lifeless teacher he played is actually him as a teacher--he has taught college courses for almost 20 years. Therefore, Stein says, Karcher is in fact stealing his unique personality. He says the theft is similar to the time Ford Motor Co. imitated the voice of entertainer Bette Midler for its commercials. Midler sued and won.