Last month, one of several lawsuits against director James Cameron was thrown out of court.
Not so much thrown, actually, as fired out of a cannon at the alleged victim.
Cameron is currently the target of at least three more lawsuits, all claiming that he cribbed the ideas for his blockbuster Avatar from their novels or unproduced screenplays.
Few of these suits have much chance of success. The authors play up some similarities in their works Soldier on an alien planet! Giant rainforests! Revolts against mining companies! but closer reading usually reveals shared generic ideas.
Theres no protection for simple plot and character elements. You say your book about a teenaged vampire in love is being ripped off by my soon-to-be-published epic masterpiece Count Dylan of Westside High? Well, get in line. Because clearly, both of us are ripping off Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, who was also obviously borrowing wholesale from The Vampire Diaries by L.J. Smith, whose author was teen-ing up Interview With The Vampire by Anne Rice, which was a spin on Stephen Kings Salems Lot and George R. R. Martins Fevre Dream, which were based on Bram Stokers Dracula (the book, not the movie with Keanu Reeves), which in turn was ripping off Sheridan LeFanus Carmilla and Paul Fevals Vampire City, which were inspired by John Polidoris The Vampyre, which was an homage to Lord Byron.
Make your cheque out to the dead English poet, if you want to put an end to it.
As the above examples show (and I could have included a dozen other branches of vampire/supernatural/gothic/romantic literature, movies, and role-playing games) ideas spawn more ideas.
Sometimes its just the zeitgeist that hits authors. For example, do I know that Stephenie Meyer has read The Vampire Diaries? No, I do not. In fact, I think its entirely plausible that her vampire romance love triangle was created independently of L.J. Smiths.
For another franchise, look at J.K. Rowlings Harry Potter. Rowling has famously been sued about as frequently as Cameron, and often by people who believe that the use of the word muggle grants them some kind of magical primacy.
Who has not sued Rowling? Well, shes not been taken to court by Ursula K. Le Guin, or by the sadly late Diana Wynne Jones. Why not?
Le Guins A Wizard of Earthsea tells the tale of a young wizard, powerful and born to a non-magical family, who barely survives an early encounter with dark magic, trains at a wizarding school, and goes on to confront and defeat the foe that nearly destroyed him.
Sound like Harry Potter? Not if youve read both series. The tone and setting are worlds apart. (If you havent read it, go pick up Earthsea today!)
Likewise, Jones has written about the similarities of her Chrestomanci books to Harry Potter, when asked by young fans. She did see some similarities. But she did not reach for the telephone to call her lawyer.
Once a book is published, out in the world, it is sort of common property, for people to take ideas from and use, and I think this is what happened to my books, Jones wrote.
There is theft and plagiarism, but much more common is inspiration, the moment when a writer puts down a book, holds the idea in his or her mind, and says, wait a moment, what if this happened instead?
Stories breed stories. Theyre meant to. The canon of literature is an edifice built upon itself, from the Bible to The Odyssey, all the way up to the latest doorstopping novels.
