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A mere claim that something is a deriviative work doesn't make it so; you'd have to show priority, connection and derivation. All of which are trickier than you
by olefoo 16y ago
A mere claim that something is a deriviative work doesn't make it so; you'd have to show priority, connection and derivation. All of which are trickier than you'd think. If a company sends out a press release and two bloggers write stories about that company that are substantively similar but not word for word identical and one of them accused the other of copying, that would be a difficult case to prove.
Generally speaking a derivative work implies the overt appropriation of elements of the original; for instance if you write a novel about the rich inner life of Ernst Stavro Blofeld, that would be derivative of Ian Fleming's body of work. If however, you write a novel about a spy with a sex addiction problem who works for the Dutch Secret service and is blond and you very carefully avoid duplicating any precise plot points from any of the James Bond novels, it may be derivative in the sense that it's obvious you were emulating Ian Fleming, but it would not legally be a derived work.
- roel_v 16y ago> A mere claim that something is a deriviative work doesn't make it so Obviously. But there is no way to tell from the OP's story. The way the OP presented the facts, the interpretation is that it's a derivative work. Someone took his text and shuffled it around just enough to make it not word for word identical. How the dice will roll in court is always tricky to say, and impossible in a case where you only have a general description of the facts, and only from one party at that. The point is that a derivative work is protected just like the original. The evidence is a whole other matter, one that nobody, in this particular case, can judge from the information given.