Are you saying you want to write a script/story based on a gun you saw in a manga book?

I recall someone doing that a couple of years ago.  It wasn't that great because it was clear that the story was written around the gun.


Phil

no, no the story isn't about the gun actually,

the gun was just an example!

the gun is special coz it as a metal plate that serves as shield for bullets, which makes that pistol usable for both offense and defence.

If this gun is something which can be easily connected to another copyrighted material, I'd stay out of it. Just to throw in an example, it wouldn't be wise to write a script in which your characters use lightsabers, even if the rest of the narrative elements are different from Star Wars. Unless you're writing it just for fun.

yeah Mister Z, but still... I mean,

comparate to something like "the invisible man"

because it was once used does it mean, no one can ever do something with an invisible man ever again without first asking for permission of rights?

a lot of movies came about invisible men...


I'm a little lost here, to what exactly is copyright and not...

still, Gabriel cleared that one pretty well for me

The same thing applies with the werewolf character, zombies, serial killers, etc. The format that the story is in and how its conveyed are all different but the ideas remain the same.  

I feel that its really difficult to come up with something original at this point in time, since there's a good chance that it was already done before in the past. But there are those few rare times when one can create something genuinly original.

Gabriel

Quoted from rpedro yeah Mister Z, but still... I mean, comparate to something like "the invisible man"

I know what you mean. I stand by my original advice, which I'll expand a bit.

If you're using an element as common as an invisible man, a werewolf, a zombie, or a vampire, don't worry.

If you're using some more specific element which can be easily related to copyrighted material, you may be in trouble.

You're  free to write a script with snakes and you're free to write a script with planes. But if you write a thriller with snakes on a plane... You get the picture.

If in doubt, stay out.

Quoted from Mr.Z You're  free to write a script with snakes and you're free to write a script with planes. But if you write a thriller with snakes on a plane... You get the picture.

Obviously, Z, you've never heard of The Asylum -- the most shameless production company on the planet.

They toss knockoffs up on the video shelves faster than you can say -- well, let's check out some of last year's titles and see if anything sounds familiar:

666:  The Child
Exorcism:  The Possession of Gail Bowers
Hillside Cannibals
When A Killer Calls
H.G. Wells War of the Worlds
The Da Vinci Treasure
and this one just out -- Snakes on a Train

Use the gun, Pedro.

If these guys aren't wrapped up in copyright battles, I can't imagine what you would have to worry about...

Hey Pedro, don't use my two hamburgers, they are copyrighted! Haha!

alright, thanks a lot all of you!

Yes Master Bert, I'll use the gun!


and Helio! Hail to the Burgers! Hail to the Burgers..



and I just sent the screenplay where that gun appears to Don!

Quoted from bert Obviously, Z, you've never heard of The Asylum -- the most shameless production company on the planet.

Wow! Never heard of them. I was impressed with the list you provided, so I looked them up on imdb and was even more impressed to find an extremely extensive list of “jewels”. Of course I immediately googled this company along with “lawsuit”, and to my surprise didn’t find anything.

So, during some moments of shock, I started having some strange thoughts. Is it safe then to write a thriller with snakes on a plane? Could we all simplyscripters gather all our savings, produce an ultra low budget “Saw 4” or “Saw 5” and make ourselves millionaires? Asylum’s credits might lead people to think that anyone could get away with anything. Something felt wrong with this. So I started digging a bit more.

The War of the Worlds movie is based on a novel which is public domain now. Since copyright has expired, you cannot violate it. The same can be said about “King of the Lost World”, another jewel from this company.

“When a Stranger Calls” is based on a very well known urban legend: http://www.snopes.com/horrors/madmen/babysit.htm

I don’t think this urban legend can be considered public domain, but this is something that could surely help when facing a lawsuit.

Their credit list is too long to check it out entirely, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find other titles taking advantage of public’s domain paradise.

Yet, it’s absolutely clear that many of their movies are based on copyrighted material (i.e. Snakes on a Train). So why can they get away with this so easily? First,  have in mind that getting away with a crime (for whatever reason) doesn’t imply that the action committed isn’t a crime anymore. I cannot know for sure why they can do this (I didn’t even watch any of this company’s movies), but I think I try out a few guesses.

My first guess it’s that this company have their scripts checked by more lawyers than screenwriters. They choose similar titles to known films in order to fool the audience, but they make sure to include a totally different story in the script to avoid being sued. Some of their credits look exactly like that: like stories trying to capitalize on bigger budgets from different movies with similar titles.

As I said, I didn’t watch any of their movies, yet I must assume that many of them have used plot and characters from well known copyrighted material. This wouldn’t be a surprise really. So why isn’t Asylum sued by the big studios? I’ll throw in another guess.

By looking at their credit list, I can see that they distribute their films straight to dvd (mostly), which means no box office from theatres. And judging by the apparent quality of the material distributed, I wouldn’t think their releases could have big grosses. And even if they did, there’s always the chance of making them look small by some creative book keeping (even big studios are famous for doing this).

This seems to be a very small company. The kind of company that couldn’t afford to pay a big lawsuit. Something to think about before wasting your money in lawyers for suing. I just have to wonder: What if Snakes on a Train was being released by a big studio, not Asylum? Wouldn’t New Line do anything about it?

Consider this: Asylum released “The Da Vinci Treasure” without being sued. Yet Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, has been twice accused of plagiarism resulting in lawsuits. Both suits were ultimately dismissed, but hey, makes you think. Copyright exists. Copyright violations exist. And people willing to pay their lawyers in order to do something about it, exist as well.

So why was Dan Brown sued twice and Asylum not even once? Maybe because Dan Brown is where the big money is. I could be wrong, but that’s my guess.

Another “famous” recent lawsuit was made against “The Island”.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/news/comments/?entryid=227916

Don’t know what happened with this one, but lawsuits for copyright infringements do exist if you look outside Asylum’s territory.

The above comments are just guesses; I’m far from being a legal expert in the entertainment field.

But one thing is for sure. These guys, Asylum, are not kids imitating their favourite shows. They’re professional rip-offers with an extensive un-sued credit list to prove it. I’m not quite sure how they do this, but you can bet they are; it isn’t just luck.

That’s why I still think it isn’t a good idea putting snakes inside a plane in your next script. Of course there hardly will be any problem if the script is just posted here on simplyscripts. But, for this discussion to make sense, we’ll have to assume that we’re talking about material with box office potential.

As for rpedro’s gun, I’m not familiar with the manga his talking about. Maybe the gun is just a prop. Maybe it’s the equivalent to Frodo’s ring in LOTR. I don’t know. That’s why I tried to point him out some guidelines in order for him to decide. Altough… looking back at this thread, it seems like he had already made a decision and just came here looking for someone to confirm it.

What I know about copyrights and such is that you can copyright a story, plot, and characters, but not an idea. You can use an idea and redo it. There are multiple examples of this and The Asylum does provide more than a few. My favorite big budget example involves the summer of 1998: Armageddon and Deep Impact. These movies have exactly the same premise, but follow it in different ways.

I've seen both The Island and Clonus and when I saw the trailer for The Island, I immediately related it to Clonus. When I saw The Island, I was surprised at just how similar the two films were. The lawsuit comes as no surprise. It's not the idea that's in dispute, according to the article Mr. Z  posted, it's the 90 specific instances. Those are the plot points and characters that appear to be lifted. The screenwriter probably saw Clonus some time ago and forgot about it.

Most of the items in the Star Wars universe are trademarked. That's a different matter altogether. Believe it or not, you could probably use a lightsaber if it wasn't a trademarked item. However, Lucasfilm has pretty much everything in the Star Wars universe with a little TM after it. That TM prevents anyone from using it in anything. Do I have something to prove this? Yup. Let's talk rings.

Frodo's/Sauron's magic ring is not in any way unique in the fantasy world. It's the most famous, but not unique. Tolkien based a huge part of his universe on an older work called The Ring of the Nibelung, which is a 12 hour opera cycle by Richard Wagner that came out in the late 19th century in 4 parts. The second part of this opera cycle is the source of the ultra-famous "Ride of the Valkyries" music. The story follows a ring that gave the wearer power over whatever and people killed over this ring. Wagner based this story on yet older mythology.

But the ring doesn't end at Tolkien's imagination. Stephen Donaldson used the wedding ring of Thomas Covenant as a source of power due to it being made of white gold in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. Covenant found himself in another world called simply "The Land" and his possession of a ring of white gold gave him immeasurable power that he didn't know how to use and didn't want. He didn't care because he didn't believe The Land was real and even in the end, it's not a certainty of the Land's reality. The tale was more based around the world than the ring, but the ring still played a central part.

If it's a common item, then copyright is not an issue, and trademark likely isn't either. If it's something specific to a universe, such as the lightsaber, the item is likely trademarked and you can't use it.

Quoted from George Willson What I know about copyrights and such is that you can copyright a story, plot, and characters, but not an idea. You can use an idea and redo it. There are multiple examples of this and The Asylum does provide more than a few. My favorite big budget example involves the summer of 1998: Armageddon and Deep Impact. These movies have exactly the same premise, but follow it in different ways.

I don't think that one of these movies was copying another but, rather, they were both based on the meteor scare that was all over the news in the two or three years before the movies came out.


Phil

Since the previous post, I've found a bit of a guilty pleasure in The Asylum. The films tend to have similar titles and even similar marketing for the sake of marketing, but the take on the material is actualy quite different. I watched their War of the Worlds the other day, and the lead was actually more endearing than Tom Cruise. Gore hounds will probably appreciate their versions of everything more than the main stream stuff, since they have a sort of "no holds barred" approach to filmmaking. I would actually recommend having a look. Netflix has a fair supply of Asylum films.

So I'm busy working on the third draft of a script of mine called Crazy for Her (this is the WIP thread if interested: http://www.simplyscripts.net/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl?b-workinprogress/m-1160092032/; hey, why not advertize), and I'm considering entering the finished draft to a screenwriting competition.

Here is my question. My script tells the story of a high school drama director and his students/actors. A Broadway show is used continuously throughout the script, i.e. songs from the show are song, dialogue is spoken, but none of it has to do with the story. It's just there as background noise and scene introductions. If I were to enter the script in a competition could I get in trouble for using someone else work? It's just a competetion, and I'm entering to get feedback and maybe see how I stuck up against others. I don't plan on selling the thing any time soon (maybe in the future).

Should I get permission from whoever owns the rights to the show? Are they going to make me pay when all I want is to use this for a competition?

This might be an unanswerable question. I doubt other have had the same problem. Maybe. Thanks in advance to any help given

Quoted from Jdawg2006 So I'm busy working on the third draft of a script of mine called Crazy for Her (this is the WIP thread if interested: http://www.simplyscripts.net/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl?b-workinprogress/m-1160092032/; hey, why not advertize), and I'm considering entering the finished draft to a screenwriting competition. Here is my question. My script tells the story of a high school drama director and his students/actors. A Broadway show is used continuously throughout the script, i.e. songs from the show are song, dialogue is spoken, but none of it has to do with the story. It's just there as background noise and scene introductions. If I were to enter the script in a competition could I get in trouble for using someone else work? It's just a competetion, and I'm entering to get feedback and maybe see how I stuck up against others. I don't plan on selling the thing any time soon (maybe in the future). Should I get permission from whoever owns the rights to the show? Are they going to make me pay when all I want is to use this for a competition? This might be an unanswerable question. I doubt other have had the same problem. Maybe. Thanks in advance to any help given

Without having read it, I would say you are in a very grey area and thte readers in the competitions may hold it against you.

Is it possible to make up your own Broadway show?


Phil