Dilbert Takes On Overbearing Patents

from the but-confuses-trademark-law dept

It didn't take very long for a whole bunch of you to submit today's Dilbert, where Scott Adams (finally) goes after overly broad patents, with Dilbert announcing that it makes no sense to build things any more, since "all future ideas are already covered by over-general patents":

Though, to be fair, Adams seems to confuse patents and trademarks in the second panel (editors?). Still, nice to see Dilbert taking on such an issue.

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Self Plagiarism And The Creative Process

from the but-is-it-infringement? dept

Last year, we had a post looking at the question of joke "stealing" and if it should be seen as infringement. Basically, there are tons of comics who are known for "stealing" the jokes of other comics, and there's even been some questions about trying to copyright jokes. The whole thing seems ridiculous, frankly. The power of a joke is rarely in the joke itself, but the delivery -- and you can't copyright that. Plus, there seem to be social measures in place to deal with "joke theft." Comics who are regularly caught doing it may have their reputations damaged, as was the case with Carlos Mencia last year.

But there's even more to it than that. In an interesting post on his blog, Scott Adams writes about how he (not for the first time) was caught drawing a nearly identical Dilbert comic strip to one he had done in the past. He delves a bit into his creative process to explain how it works, noting that there are a ton of ideas flowing through his head at once and he just has to reach out and grab from that mass of ideas:

For me, ideas stream through my head at a frantic pace. I feel like a bear trying to grab a salmon. If my paw misses its target, that salmon is gone for good. I don't dwell on it. I just lunge for the next salmon. I think people who have fewer thoughts per hour have time to let them settle in and form memories. It's just a theory.

That's likely true for many creative folks, including stand-up comics. As such, the ideas that you have in your head, and the ones that you hear and see from others end up getting mixed up in that mass of "idea salmon." As such, it shouldn't be surprising or scandalous or bad when someone ends up coming up with a similar (or even almost identical) joke or idea to someone else. It's just part of the creative process at work. It's not "stealing" and it's not "infringement." It's just a recognition of the creative process that involves a large number of ideas flowing around that a content creator tries to bring together in some sort of useful or interesting manner.

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Scott Adams To Try Crowdsourcing Dilbert's Jokes?

from the can't-wait-to-see-dogbert's-take dept

While I've had my own minor run in with Dilbert-creator Scott Adams, I remain a fan of the strip. Adams has always received many of his ideas for the strip from readers, incorporating them into the storylines and jokes. Now, it looks like he's taking that idea even further: letting his fans write the comics themselves. Late last week, the Dilbert.com website got a massive makeover, which upset many folks, in particular for its wide use of flash. It also broke the "unofficial" RSS feed that someone had created for Dilbert comic strips -- though the Dilbert people (finally!) realized it wasn't such a bad idea to offer one of their own. While the new site may be a bit flash-heavy and annoying to manage, it's quite interesting to see that one of the features on the site will be to allow fans of the strip to write their own punchline, filling in the text for the final frame. Eventually, this will extend to filling in the text of the whole cartoon. While there are no official plans to publish any of the results, Adams seems curious to see what pops out. He even admits the realities of copyright when it comes to these cartoons (which is amusing, since the argument we had was over copyright), telling News.com:

"We're accepting the realities of IP on the Internet, and trying to get ahead of the curve. People already alter Dilbert strips and distribute them. If we make it easy and legal to do so, and drive more traffic to Dilbert.com in the process, everyone wins. Plus it's a lot of fun to see what people come up with in the mashups."

Even though there is something of a filter in place, it's likely that (as with other such efforts) some of the results will push the boundaries of tastelessness. Still, once you get past that, it will be worth seeing how much this impacts Adams' work. The suggested punchlines could influence future strips, or Adams may eventually do something interesting with those alternative panels. Of course, the whole thing could fail miserably, but it'll still be fun to watch the experiment in action.

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