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Two People Can Have The Same Idea... It's Not Necessarily 'Theft', Infringement Or Plagiarism
from the creativity-knows-no-bounds dept
Someone who prefers to remain anonymous alerts us to the fact that some Icelandic movie producers are apparently furious and considering a lawsuit because they claim an episode of the TV show Heroes "stole" a scene (yes, just a scene) from a movie they produced. The link above has clips of both scenes, and there's simply no case at all here should they sue (and hopefully they won't). You see various lawsuits all the time with people claiming they came up with some generic concept for a TV show or movie, but it never sticks. Lots of people have the same basic ideas. Copyright infringement, on the other hand, requires actual copying of the specific content. Not just the general idea. Yet, if you watch these two clips, they're only loosely similar. They both involve a blonde-haired woman (who is clearly not a comic book fan), applying for a job in a comic book shop. That's about where the similarities end.
But, once again, this is indicative of the culture that we've created in this world with over-aggressive expansion of intellectual property laws, where people really do think that ideas are ownable, and as long as they were "first" no one else can possibly have a similar idea.
