I’m outlining my next writing project, and there is a very interesting true story in a neighboring town that I am dying to write a fictional version of. There’s already a non-fiction version of this in print, and of course, I want to avoid all of the entanglements associated with this kind of project, legal and otherwise.
The trouble is that I want to use the actual town as a setting (very small town), and I want to make use of a great deal of the story (though bent and twisted for my own purposes). It goes without saying, that I’ll have to change the names of the main people in the story, and I’m perfectly okay with that, but what else must I do? It isn’t like the author of this non-fiction work made any of this story up, so what are the copyright ramifications of doing this?
If you’re a published author, you want to speak to your publisher. They probably have someone you can talk to about this to keep you legal, and to help you produce an MS they’ll actually be willing to print.
I think that facts can’t be copyright (though you really should check your local laws), but I’d be more concerned with libel. If someone recognizes themselves in your book and doesn’t like what you’ve fictionally got them doing…
I agree with Mr. Slant, let your publisher take the pain
You’re correct facts cannot be copyrighted, at least in the USA. Of course just the facts are boring so you have to put a spin on it.
These are how those unauthorized bios get published, they stick to the published facts and then produce their own spin on them.
In the end if you get an actual publisher they will go through your book with their lawyers and tell you what to take out anyway.
A publisher is intersted in getting money for your book, not getting sued. So even if you could print it and it was not copyrighted, if there’s a chance of getting sued, it’d be likely to be pulled to prevent the cost of a lawsuit, regardless of the outcome.
In general, you are free to fictionalize actual events; the only issue is not copyright, but libel.
If you portray real people in a bad light, they may try to sue you. It’s hard to say how successful they’d be – you can claim that it was fiction and thus not libel – but a publisher might want to avoid the possibility of having to defend a lawsuit.
It’d be best to change any of the characters who are shown in a bad light so that their characteristics are different from the original person. This is especially true if the character is shown doing something illegal.
Libel issues are outside of my area of expertise, so I’d recommend running it by an attorney. Or, better yet, do as others have suggested and let your publisher do it. They will anyway.
But as to the main question…
There are no copyright ramifications for using the story described in the nonfiction book. What happened, happened. The author of the nonfiction book doesn’t own the events and associated facts.
The way the facts are presented, on the other hand, is covered by copyright. Don’t plagiarize text from the other book. Don’t describe things with the same adjectives the other author used, or use the same quotes from people. Be upfront with the publisher and explain what you’ve done.
If you carefully craft your story to keep the most interesting parts of what actually happened, but change lots of details and introduce some new (fictional) characters, you’re probably okay. But be prepared: the publisher will most likely run your manuscript by a lawyer (or an editor who thinks he’s a lawyer), and they will probably make changes.
As others have said, the real concern is defamation, not copyright infringement, and also these issues are best handled by your publisher’s counsel. Write the story how you want it and then take it to your publisher and they will tell you want you need to change.
There are no local copyright laws. Federal law has pre-empted state law on the subject.
The movie Amistad ran into a situation like this. A group of African slaves took over the ship La Amistad in 1839 and their case did appear before the United States Supreme Court. Barbara Chase-Riboud wrote a historical novel, Echo of Lions, on the incident. She then attempted to sell the film rights to her novel to Steven Spielberg. Spielberg didn’t buy the rights but he did go on to make a movie about the incident. Chase-Riboud sued but Spielberg argued that his movie and her novel were just based on the same historical incident but his movie was not based on her novel. (It greatly helped Spielberg’s case that he was able to show that early steps in the production of the movie predated Chase-Rimbaud’s book and was based on a 1953 novel Black Mutiny: The Revolt on the Schooner Amistad by William A. Owens which Spielberg did have the film rights to.) Chase-Riboud ended up dropping the lawsuit.
This is a tricky question, and has been posted before, a publisher can help you.
My answer is that plagiarism primarily hinges on lifting specific passages of text. In more general terms, they would have to prove that you plagiarized a specific idea that was unique to the original work. As long as you stick to “just the facts” and do not include someone else’s interpretation of those facts, it should be fine.
“The Da Vinci Code” ran into this same problem. The author used material similar to a “nonfiction” book, “Holy Blood Holy Grail”, and explicitly credited the authors of the book as being “experts” in the field. The authors of HBHG sued him for infringing on their work. Unless you copy word for word, I have no idea how you can be faulted for cribbing nonfiction, because two people writing from the same facts would naturally include the same content. Apparently a judge agreed, because the lawsuit was thrown out.
They cannot copyright facts, as other have pointed out.
However, in a roughly fictionalized account such as a docudrama (or whatever teh book ewquivalent is) you have to be careful not to lift bits the other author may have made up. For example, a historical play or movie may have dialog between Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin. If you use that dialog - well, obviously it cam from somewhere. The original author my take a letter exchange and make it more exciting by turning it into dialog.
So let’s say, now, you repeat that dialog - almost the same. Unless you can show you knew about the letter exchnage, and di NOT know the other author had turned it into a spoken exchange, you certainly look like you just copied him. Too many “looks like it was copied” bits and you are violating his copyright. hence the need for serious research, to show you are basing your story on real events, not just paraphrasing one book. Add details the other author left out; don’t have the characters with the same motivations and such as his book. In short, do research and be original.
Also, the warning applies. I recall reading once that the “any resemblance to characters living or dead is purely fictional” came from an old movie about Rasputin. In standard Hollywood fashion, they totally mangled the storyline, and included the introduction, “based on a true story and some of the characters may still be living”. Well, in the 1930’s or 1940’s certainly some of the guys who killed Rasputin were still alive, and one of them sued the studio over how he was portrayed. The disclaimer has been used ever since.
“This is a work of fiction. All characters and their actions and motivations are the creation of the author. It is based loosely on the true-life events of Octember 38, 1987, in North Puddle, VT, as reported eloquently in The North Puddle Murders by Ima Source, whom the author wishes to acknowledge for inspiration and background on details.”
The problem Brown ran into was that “Holy Blood Holy Grail” was as you put it “nonfiction” rather than nonfiction. The lawyers for Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh essentially admitted that they had made up all the facts for their book so it would have been impossible for Brown to have discovered them independently. The lawsuit was dismissed basically on the grounds that Baigent and Leigh had presented their book as historical fact and therefore Brown was free to use it for research purposes to the same degree he could use any other genuine work of nonfiction.
You can use as many facts as you want. I’d be careful about taking notes though - it’s probably better to only use facts that you can remember on your own, in order to avoid accidently paraphrasing things too close to the original source, as was claimed to be an issue with Atonement…
Oh yes there are. For instance, I’m from the UK where facts cannot be copyrighted, but you should check your local copyright laws (which, in this case, would be US federal law).
