There's another interesting copyright issue regarding the film in question here, "All Things Fall Apart". Apparently, 50 Cent wanted to call the movie "Things Fall Apart", but Chinua Achebe, who wrote a famous book by that name in 1958, refused to sell him the rights for $1 million. The crazy part of this is that Achebe took the title from a line from Yeats' 1919 poem "The Second Coming". How Achebe can turn around and prevent someone else from using a title he himself borrowed is beyond me. http://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/sep/14/chinua-achebe-5...
I don't think that's a copyright issue, rather something more related to trademark (although I don't think you can trademark the title of a book either, there are a bunch of more obscure IP-related protections and this might fall under one of them).
Nobody can copyright a three word phrase. [edit: almost never, see [1]]
Copyright also applies if you copy enough story elements, but that doesn't apply because 50 Cent's movie is not in any meaningful way a copy of Achebe's story. And if that were the case, even changing the title completely wouldn't avoid infringement. You would violate Rowling's copyright, for instance, if you took a Harry Potter book, outlined the plot (even with character and place names changed), and wrote a new novel from scratch using that outline.
"The novel with the said title was initially produced in 1958 (that is 17 years before [50] was born)," replied his lawyers, according to Naijan. "[It is] listed as the most-read book in modern African literature, and won't be sold for even £1bn."
I think this was IP bullying by Achebe's legal team (if were laywers at all). They claim to have a monopoly to use the very generic title (even when separated from the underlying story), and when offered a lot of money (I'd love to hear 50 Cent's lawyers reason for offering a million dollars to use that title), they make a category error, confusing rights to the book itself with rights to a fairly generic title.
If the state of the world is anything to go by, you indeed cannot protect the title of your book, as it's quite frequent for two books to have exactly the same name.
> You would violate Rowling's copyright, for instance, if you took a Harry Potter book, outlined the plot (even with character and place names changed), and wrote a new novel from scratch using that outline.
Terry Brooks might be surprised to hear this, as he seems to have been safe from the notoriously litigious Tolkien estate. Try reading The Lord of the Rings sometime, then read The Sword of Shannara (accurately described as "especially blatant in its point-for-point correspondence" [1]).
Again, though, all that's only relevant if you're interested in the actual state of the world.
You might be able to trademark it, if it's sufficiently unique in its market to be trademarked. (i.e. you form a corporation with the book title as its slogan, or you attach the trademark to some product or service you sell.)
However, contrary to popular belief, trademarks do not prohibit others using your trademarks in their writing. They prohibit others using your trademarks deceptively or in a way likely to cause confusion. Which means you don't have the same ability to prevent someone from using your trademark in the title or content of their book, that you have to prevent them from using copyrighted material in their book.
Exactly. There is no protection to the title of books. The reason the author can force to change the title is the same reason you can be "forced" to sign an EULA. If you want to use the story, that is illegal until the writer contractually gives you that right. He can put whatever terms in that contract and you can say yes or no.
So an author can force a film company to switch all it's employees to rainbow colored forks in their family homes and the film company has two options : comply, or find another book to make a movie from.
This is similar to an EULA. You are in no way forced to sign the EULA. But there's nothing else giving you the right to use the software. So you have one of two choices : agree to the EULA, or find another piece of software.
Of course you can take the plot outline and rewrite the story without copyright infringement. Copyright infringement applies when reusing the actual author's writing.
Copyright law, at least in the USA, views a sufficiently non-generic copy of another work's plot as a copyright violation. For a specific example of how this works, here's a lawsuit based on the concept, and don't miss section 31: http://www.scribd.com/doc/74815749/Angelina-Jolie-Lawsuit (that particular lawsuit didn't succeed.)
Another quirk: copyright law also views copies of sufficiently important elements (like characters/setting/etc. which are clearly taken from another work) as a copyright violation, even if the story is different; fanfic is technically a copyright violation.
That's basically the standard operating procedure for most cases of intellectual property defense in art: culture has always been a thing of remix and locking it down at some point as "original" is the novel and nonsensical behavior.
I think any copyrights Yeats would have had in 1958 were expired. Unfortunately, cannot say the same about ones Achebe has since the rules have extended time periods to be much longer now.
Seems fairly straightforward? There's a difference between naming a title after a line from a poem, and copying a title from another title. The former wouldn't cause any confusion, the latter would. Now if the poem was called "Things Fall Apart" instead of "The Second Coming," things have been different.
That's a trademark issue, "Things Fall Apart" by Achebe is one of the most popular works of literature in Nigeria & Africa. They would protect their trademark like businesses do. BTW RIP to Chinua Achebe, he was a great writer.
It's amusing how the troll-firm defines itself as non-profit. It must mean the firm doesn't accrue any value from its operations. If it takes a few bonuses for the partners to ensure that never happens, well that's okay!
It means they probably siphon the money off somewhere (shell companies, the companies that hire / enlist them, etc) so that they're only non-profit because their books balance out and because of the tax exemption status it gets them.
Can you elaborate on some of those issues? I've heard the unsubstantiated claim that the NYSE works on essentially that principle, and the much better-substantiated claim that that's what's going on with Morris Dees and the SPLC.
edit: stop impugning the SCLC; correctly impugn the SPLC.
As with most things, it depends on if you do it right or not. Do it right, and you're good. Make it too transparent what is going on, and you are going to get nailed.
Yeah, the title could be done a bit more tactfully. They're not pirates (or, guilty of copyright infringement) until they're convicted by a court, and iirc, the number of people actually brought to court, charged, tried and convicted is very small. Usually they're coerced into paying a settlement and the thing is over with.
Wait, let me get this straight. A company with no vested interest in the copyright, no association with the party who owns the copyright, was claiming copyright infringement and trying to subpoena identities? What the heck?
Ars did a post-mortem of sorts that explained just that, that Righthaven did not posses any actual interest in the copyrights themselves, and had no standing to sue.
> no association with the party who owns the copyright
Did you read the article?
> The Swiss firm didn’t hide the fact that they were nothing to do with the making of the film and they also admitted not being involved with traditional movie distribution channels. Instead, they licensed “BitTorrent distribution” and “enforcement” rights from Los Angeles-based Hannibal Pictures.
Contra Piracy only had IPs, so they went to court to request the identities of the file-sharers from ISPs. At that point, there was nobody to defend since they had no names.
I don't know about "walk free". If I were Contra Piracy, I would simply go back to Hannibal Pictures' lawyers and get them to file the suit. Clearly as the actual copyright owners, they have standing to file. Thus Contra Piracy would become a subcontractor to Hannibal Pictures, and probably clear fewer bucks, but at least it wouldn't be a complete loss.
Actual copyright holders don't want to, it doesn't scale. The scalable model is to demand settlement (marginal cost of roughly $0 after making email templates and writing IP harvesting software) not to hire expensive lawyers to actually file lawsuits.
It'll be interesting to see what happens with this. You may be right. Depends on how enterprising Contra is, and how willing the studio is to engage in more than just selling some rights and walking away. It's not really that much potential revenue, the studio may not want to do any more.
