Legal Scenario: Slytherin!Rowling vs. the Fanfic Author

[Steve <bboy_mn@yahoo.com>]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Caius Marcius
<coriolan at w...>" <coriolan at w...> wrote:
> Here's a hypothetical scenario I was pondering the other day 
> involving the legal status of fanfic vs. the original author's 
> creations. 
> 
> ...edited...
>
> Neville L., an avid and skilled fanfic writer, is shocked to 
> discover that whole chapters of his work were incorporated into 
> Order of the Phoenix, with only minor rewording. ... Neville 
> contacts a lawyer well versed in copyright law. 
> 
> ...edited... 
> Neville is concerned that he might be facing plagiarism charges 
> himself if he tries to collect damages in court. 
> 
> How would the lawyer respond? ...
> 
>     - CMC

bboy_mn:

Does anybody here know who Ted Turner is; he's the guy who started
Turner Broadcast which is on cable? I think he is out of the company
now, but it still bares his name.

One of Ted Turner's ideas to make money was to take really old famous
classic black and white movies and colorize them, then show them
royalty free on his network. The people who still had rights to these
films wanted their royalties, so they took Turner to court. Turner
originally claimed the these films were so old, they were in public
domain. But when it actually came to the courtroom stategy, they went
with something better.

The court rule in favor of Turner. They claimed that by colorizing the
movies, he had added artistic merit to them and thereby, created a new
independant work of art to which only Turner had royalty rights.

So our hypothetical author Neville, has used JKR's characters in a not
for profit way, and created a new work of art. His writing is a unique
one of a kind original story that has been published (on the
Internet). As soon as he published it, he established his Copyright
rights to it. Now if Neville tries to comercialize on his original
story, then he would owe royalties to JKR assuming JKR would allow her
characters to be use for profit.

Despite the two authors using the same core characters, Neville has
truly created a unique work of art; a copyrighted work of art. So I
think Neville would have a case that would allow him to extract some
payment from the use of his work of art.

Just an opinion.

bboy_mn