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Author Sues Production Company For Copyright Infringement For Changing The Script It Optioned From Him
from the moral-rights-through-contract dept
While significant parts of the rest of the world include a "moral rights" component to copyright (which covers things like proper attribution), the US has always avoided it -- even though it's supposedly required by the Berne Convention, of which the US is a participant. The US has mainly gotten around this because it's the US and it ignores international agreements when it wants to -- but also because it put in a tiny bit of moral rights in extremely limited circumstances that are so rare you'll almost never, ever hear about them. However, it does appear that some are trying to sneak in a form of moral rights via contract.
Copycense points us to the news of a writer, Matthew Jones, who is suing the people who optioned his screenplay (which was based on his own novel, Boot Tracks) for changing the screenplay without his permission. He apparently wrote into the contract that such changes could not be made without his permission -- and yet the screenplay was changed to help get funding. There's an obvious contractual breach in there, but Jones is also claiming copyright infringement, suggesting that, by breaking the agreement, they were also creating an unauthorized derivative work. In this case, it's a little more confusing, because there's some question as to when the producer and director actually exercised the option to buy the screenplay/make the film. Either way, it may make for an interesting case and it makes me wonder if we'll start to see more efforts by content creators to enforce such moral-like rights via contract.
Copycense points us to the news of a writer, Matthew Jones, who is suing the people who optioned his screenplay (which was based on his own novel, Boot Tracks) for changing the screenplay without his permission. He apparently wrote into the contract that such changes could not be made without his permission -- and yet the screenplay was changed to help get funding. There's an obvious contractual breach in there, but Jones is also claiming copyright infringement, suggesting that, by breaking the agreement, they were also creating an unauthorized derivative work. In this case, it's a little more confusing, because there's some question as to when the producer and director actually exercised the option to buy the screenplay/make the film. Either way, it may make for an interesting case and it makes me wonder if we'll start to see more efforts by content creators to enforce such moral-like rights via contract.
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Makes sense
This sounds like exactly the same argument here.
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Re: Makes sense
If the play was optioned, then the two entities entered into a contract.
When distributing GPLed software, it's always not clear that the two parties entered a contract. If they didn't, it's clearly copyright infringement and not a contract violation. If they did, it could be both.
Do you have anything to back this up?
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Re: Re: Makes sense
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Re: Re: Makes sense
See http://www.fsf.org/licensing/complaint-2008-12-11.pdf for an example. The first and only count (Copyright Infringement) starts on page 12.
It basically comes down to 'defendant violated our copyright'. The only responses are: 1) show copyright not held by plaintiff; 2) show works are not copyrightable or no longer under copyright; 3) show that you have a license.
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Re: Re: Makes sense
The same thing is going on here, except that it's also a contract violation.
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If the clause was written into the contract, then I suppose Jones has a case. It's an unrealistic clause that's got no business being there, but it's a breach of contract if it was. But, Jones may find it hard to get his work optioned in the future if he's going to sue people for doing the necessary steps to obtain funding.
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Response to: PaulT on Sep 23rd, 2011 @ 1:13am
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Re: Response to: PaulT on Sep 23rd, 2011 @ 1:13am
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Sorry if any of this is answered in the document above, I can't read it at the moment. I just think that unless there's something I'm not getting (quite possible), then involving the courts seems a rather rash move.
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'the US ignores international agreements when it wants to'. shame the US then goes on to force other countries to do what it wants, when it wants, effectively making those countries break international agreements as well, just because it suits the US
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Copyrights and contracts
The whole thing is a complete mess. Lucky lawyers.
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