I do a bit of writing, plays mostly, and I’ve been developing an idea for some time now about my next project. Anyhoo, I was flicking through a Halliwels film guide last night, and my eye caught a review of a movie… MY PLAY!!! Almost exactly, word for word. It was creepy, here was this movie from Australia, seven years ago, whose plot matched the plot of my play almost exactly… You’ll notice I don’t say which film, as I intend to write my play anyway, and don’t want to acknowledge the existence of this other, fairly unknown work. Where do I stand, legally on this? How can I convince people that I didnt just copy this other work? Granted, I could be worrying about nothing, as the chances of my play being seen by anymore than a few hundred people in local theatres are very slim. But still, you ever know. Any other dopers ever faced this problem? Or has anyone had a great idea only for hollywood to beat them to it?
Unless you had some ideas for it written dowen previously, and somehow could accurately date those ideas, I don’t think there is a way. And it does remind me of one of my friends who had something similar happen to him,
The first time i met him, he was talking to some other people about a great idea he had for a musical. be it either stage or movie (movie would be easier, due to special effects.) The idea? Anne Frank: The Musical. It would culminate in a lightsaber duel between Anne Frank and Hitler, and feature such sobngs as:
(To the tune of…umm…well, Remember The Simpsons episode “The 11th Commandment”? And that song about Camp Grananda thatBart replaces the answering machine tape with? Yeah, that tune.)
“Oh they’re hiding, in the attic.
Yes they’re hiding, in the attic!
Call the nazis, call the gestapo.
Call the nazis 'cause the Jews are hiding in the attic!”
And duiring the lightsaber fight, “Duel of the Fats” from The Phantom Menace is playing, but instead of whatever words theyare chanting that no one knows, the chorus is:
“Hitler!
Anne Frank!
Hitler, Hitler, GHitler, Anne Frank!
Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Anne Frank!”
Now, the rest of the story comes in when this friend watched “The Producers” for the first time ever. He is not a Mel Brooks fan, so he never saw it until after I met him. I was not watching it with him, but was in the other room. At some point after we are introduced to “Springtime for Hitler” he jumps up, and just starts yelling,
“He stole my idea! He stole my idea! That fucking bastard stole my idea!”
We explained to him that “The Producers” was written around the time he was born, but he still said that Mel Brooks stole his idea for a light-hearted musical about Nazi Germany.
Well, it could be the execution of your idea differs from theirs, but keep in mind that a recent summer blockbuster is under lawsuit for just this problem. The Island is apparently a near ripoff of some older, cheesy sci-fi. So you could be sued for damages.
Posting about it on the SDMB is probably the wrong move for you, legally speaking.
First rule: Ideas aren’t copyrightable. It doesn’t matter if someone else used the same plot. What’s copyrightable is the expression of that plot – the actual words used to tell the story.
So, the first thing you need to do is not see the movie. That means that you are in a strong position in any lawsuit.
Now some people are going to think you stole the idea. But see the first rule. Unless you are quoting verbatim from the movie, you’re in the clear copyrightwise.
While this relates to arts/entertainment, it’s really a legal question. As such, I have two comments:
(1) Be wary of any general “legal advice” that you get from well-meaning online friends. It’s worth exactly what you paid for it; worse, it’s liable to be wrong. The only way to determine where you stand, legally (your question) is to consult a lawyer about the specifics of your situation. (And I suggest doing so before you waste your time writing what’s already been wrote.) If you can’t afford a lawyer, check with legal aid in your area.
(2) You’re asking a question about legal situations and copyrights, and that isn’t really about arts/entertainment, except peripherally, so I’m moving this thread to General Questions.
Having written and optioned screenplays, I can say with reliable assurance that a movie or play is not an idea but the execution thereof.
That said, you will have a MUCH harder time selling the product because of this situation. Readers and prodcos are very hip and leery of liability situations.
this birngs up a question of mine, that is relevant to this matter
i am writing a book using a livejournal blog under private entries,
do the dates that they are submitted have any legal standing for a situation like this?
the reason i ask is because, lj has a feature where one can backdate an entry, giving the entry any date and time the user pleases- but if there were a way to tell the difference between backdating and original submission, then id think the entries would be valuable evidence
I don’t think that would be good evidence; there is no way to discern LJ entries that have been backdated from ones that were posted in the past, at least I can’t see a difference on mine. What you should do is mail it to yourself via postal mail and not open the envelope. Get the postmark, you see.
But I agree that the OP probably doesn’t have much to worry about. After I wrote my book, I was shocked to find that there was another book with nearly my exact basic idea. I was dismayed to find characters similar to my main character in a television show and several popular movies. I thought I was being totally derivative and wanted to scrap my book. But as others pointed out to me, I really had nothing to worry about; although the older book has some surface similarities with my book, the plot structures are totally different. And while my character is drawn from an archetype to which many other characters belong, I managed to do enough things to make her original.
There are things you can do to lessen the parallel between your work and others. For instance, one of the minor characters had the same name as one of the characters in a television show on which the main character has several traits in common with my main character. So I changed the name. Names are easy to change and don’t affect anything much, and I think it’s a good idea to do that if there’s something even remotely similar to your work in which characters have similar names. As for plot, when you get right down to it everything is derivative. How many movies have been written about aliens attacking Earth? Like a trillion? There are a million spins you can put on an idea to make it original.
(Yes, I’m being deliberately obtuse in the above paragraphs, I think it’s best not to be too specific about my book for legal reasons.)
Legal standing to do what, MessyPaint?
Copyright infringement suits for entries on blogs are virtually non-existent. Who would want to take anything of yours and why? You’d have to find another way of time-stamping since no court would ever consider a retroactively changeable time stamp.
One thing not to do is what davenportavenger said:
This is known as “poor man’s copyright.” It has never been held up in court.
Copyright infringement does exist. I’ve been plagiarized myself. But almost nothing ever goes to court because the process is just too expensive unless you’re a major corporation. And the odds of anything of yours needing legal protection to the exact minute are beyond calculation.
Sorry, didn’t mean to give misinformation. Lots of people I know do this to protect their work, I thought it had at least some legal basis.
Not any of real meaning.
MessyPaint, as soon as something is committed to the web, paper, etc it is copyrighted. Your much better bet would be to go through much more secure channels.
There is a lot of chaff to be sifted through, but try here:
Overall a good and helpful bunch.
Lots of luck,
H
I had this experience, almost word for word, while I was waiting for my first book to be published. I came upon the other book because my agent said, “Here’s a writer you’ll likely be compared with,” so I read it.
Had I read that book before writing my book, let me just say I wouldn’t have written my book, I would have written another one. I mean, let’s forget about the plucky female protagonist, everybody had those. I had the Fat Philosopher, she had a fat philosopher. I had a Stepford-wife executive, she had a Stepford-wife administrator. I went through this book with increasing horror plot point by derivative plot point (and damn, it was just exactly the kind of book I should have really lost myself in, in other circumstances) and came to the conclusion that I must have, must have read her book before, memorized it, then repressed it and regurgitated it thinking Iwas writing. I thought I was being so damned original! I actually asked my agent if I should give the advance back (right, unspend the money and all that). My agent told me to have a few glasses of wine and get to work on the next book.
Yes. And not only in the realm of the arts. A few years ago I tried to enlist my son, who was then studying to be an electrical engineer, and who is also very into music, on this great idea to make something you could attach to your radio that would scan the airwaves and look for songs you liked, your own personal playlist. He said it was possible but would be too expensive and not enough people would want it, because why? If you liked a song that much you’d get it on an MP3.
It must be a family thing. My mother invented Velcro (she didn’t call it that, of course) in the early '50s only to find someone else already had a patent on it, just a couple of years ahead of her. She did invent and patent a couple of other things, one of which (a starter for charcoal briquettes) showed up a lot in catalogs for awhile.
I think you should consider the possibility that you had heard about this movie in some way already. I’m certainly not accusing you of anything, but it is common for a seven-year old movie’s plot to make it’s way to someone without them having seen the movie or conciously remembering anything they might have heard about it.
In a musical theft case, George Harrison was found as having unconciously stolen an idea from someone else. Seems entirely believable to me.