MINNEAPOLIS -- Two Minnesota Twins fans who made a documentary film about traveling in a Volkswagen van to ballparks across the nation have sued MasterCard, claiming the company stole their idea for its commercials.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court in Minneapolis, David Hoch and Joe Marble accuse MasterCard and its ad agency of duplicating their 1998 documentary in a series of commercials.

According to the lawsuit, MasterCard used a Volkswagen van with the same orange-and-white coloring as the one Hoch and Marble drove, used video shots of stadiums photographed through bridge girders that resemble scenes in their film, and had music similar to theirs.

"You start asking yourself, 'How could this be a coincidence?' " said Minneapolis lawyer Ronald Schutz, who filed the lawsuit.

The lawsuit accuses MasterCard and New York-based McCann-Erickson Worldwide of violating the copyright. It seeks unspecified damages and an injunction barring further use of the commercials.

"If there is a substancial amount of similarity between the film and the commercial, and Mastercard or the ad agency knew of the film, this case could hold up," Mark Conrad, professor of legal and ethical studies at the Fordham University School of Business, told ESPN.com. "The other essential question to ask is: Can what these guys did in the documentary be deemed original?"

A spokeswoman for the ad agency said Monday she hadn't seen the lawsuit and couldn't comment. Representatives of MasterCard couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

Hoch, 41, a mortgage broker from Arden Hills, and Marble, 41, a real estate broker from Hopkins, created the group Citizens United for Baseball in Minnesota after hearing rumors in 1997 about a plan to move the Twins. The following year, the two filmed their travels to ballparks in Milwaukee, Chicago, Cleveland, Baltimore and Denver.

The documentary, called "Twins -- Now and Forever," was shown at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., according to the lawsuit.

The Associated Press contributed to this report