Zazzle Sued Because Twilight Fans Like Making Their Own Merchandise

from the safe-harbors-anyone? dept

It looks like "print-on-demand/create your own t-shirt/mug/mouse pad store" company Zazzle has been sued for infringement by Summit Entertainment, who owns the licensing rights to the oh-so-popular Twilight movies. Apparently, all those excited tweens have been making their own Twilight merchandise. Now, basic common sense would tell you that Zazzle is the tool provider, and not the actual infringer here. But, Summit is claiming trademark violations, and (tragically and inexplicably) the official safe harbors cover things like copyright and defamation, but not trademark (hurray for legal loopholes). The only ones doing the actual infringement are the users, not Zazzle itself, but Zazzle has to hope that a court actually realizes this, and sometimes the courts get very, very confused on these sorts of things.

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Author Using Questionable Copying Claim Against Twilight Author For Publicity

from the idea-expression-dichotomy dept

Copyright is only supposed to cover the specific expression, not the idea or concept -- but for many, that's tough to grasp. Unfortunately, the group of folks who sometimes don't understand has included some judges, leading to some wacky rulings at times. However, it still hasn't reached the point where novelists are able to claim ownership of basic plot concepts (though some are trying to claim you can patent a plot). Yet, pretty much any time you have a really successful author, someone shows up and claims that the idea for the famous book was "stolen" from them. It happened (multiple times) with The Da Vinci Code. It's happened (multiple times) with Harry Potter. And, now it's happening to the author of the Twilight vampire series, Stephenie Meyer. Another author (represented by his lawyer, J. Craig Williams) is claiming that the plot of one of the books has similarities to a book she wrote a few years earlier. However, the supposed copying seems weak at best:

In a cease-and-desist letter Williams sent to Hachette Book Group, he provided comparisons from the two books of a wedding, a sex-on-the-beach episode and a passage where a human-turned-vampire describes the wrenching change.

As another instance of similarities, Williams pointed out that characters in both books call their wives "love."

As you look at the details, it's almost always a situation where the jealous author is really just using the lawsuit as an attempt to get publicity for their book (which is why we're not naming the other book). As if to prove that, the author's lawyer claims:

"I think the fans have to read both books and make up their own mind, like a judge is going to have to," Williams said.

Shouldn't there be sanctions for abusing copyright law to file bogus lawsuits just to get some press for your book?

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On Second Thought, Perhaps Stephenie Meyer Doesn't Get Online Fans

from the so-much-for-that dept

It really was just a month ago that we were writing about how super successful fiction author Stephenie Meyer was showing exactly how to embrace online fans, giving them free reign to build on her works and do more with them to build up her own popularity. As I was writing that post, I have to admit, in the back of my head, I wondered if I would later be writing a post about an anti-fan decision -- but even I'm surprised at how quickly it happened.

Apparently, a draft of the fifth book in her Twilight Series was leaked online, and Meyer is so upset b the ordeal that she's saying the book is on hold and may never be finished. Instead, she's telling people to consider the fourth book to be the end of the series.

As a writer, you can certainly understand the sentiment. She wants the final release to be as good as it can be, and that means getting the chance to do full rewrites, edits and other things to make sure that it's as good as can be. But, at the same time, she also has to understand that her fans are going to clamor for such a leak anyway. It shows how much they love her work and how badly they want to keep up on the latest story that they're willing to either leak or download the leak. It's just a sign of how strong their feeling is towards her work -- and her response is to punish them for it? That seems wrong.

Her true fans will still buy the completed work, should it ever come out. They want the official version and the leaked version. Why do you think so many music fans rush to get "leaked" copies of demo tapes of bands they love? People like to see how these things evolve and change over time, as it gives them an even closer connection to the work itself. I can sympathize that Meyers is upset by this, and that she might be concerned about the impact on the final story, but she might want to rethink her initial reaction, and realize that this is hardly something to be upset about. It's a sign of how much people care about her work.

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