Lazy Bee Scripts
Copyright, Trademarks and Plagiarism
 "All Art is Theft"
- Pablo Picasso (attributed)		  

 

Whilst Picasso was right, in the sense that we all build on ideas that have gone before, there are some legal limits, therefore before you submit a script to a publisher (for which see the main Guide to Getting Your Script Published) ask yourself whether you are infringing anyone else's rights.  All art is theft, but some theft is actionable in a court of law!  Here are a few common issues...
 
Messing with The Mouse
Here's a quick quiz question for you: can you name the Seven Dwarfs? 
If your answer include any or all of Happy, Grumpy, Sleepy, Sneezey, Bashful, Dopey and Doc, then you have picked names that are trademarks of the Walt Disney Corporation.  (Those names did not exist in relation to seven dwarfs prior to the Walt Disney animation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.)  Names that are the trademark of the Walt Disney Corporation may not be used in any other artistic work without the permission of the Walt Disney Corporation.  If they haven't given you permission, don't use the names.
The same applies in principle to other trademarked names (particularly the names of characters or toys).  Except in the limited case of parody, you need the permission of the trademark owner in order to put words into the mouth of the character.
 
Who owns the Copyright?
Copyright basics:
  • Copyright is a right (not a process). It is an assertion that someone (usually the creator) has the rights of owner of a work.  (Those rights include the right to define the conditions under which other people may use the work.)
  • In UK law, copyright in a literary work lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years.  (Literary works include books, scripts and musical libretti.)
  • US law is more complex (with the duration of copyright depending on when the work was created or published), but as a rule of thumb the life of the author plus 70 years can be taken as valid.
  • Copyright applies to plots, characters and situations.  You cannot, for example, use the character of Harry Potter without infringing the copyright of J.K. Rowling.

Thus if you want to write a play which includes characters or situations from a pre-existing literary work, you have to ask yourself if the work is still in copyright, and if the answer is "yes", you need the copyright owner's permission to use the characters.
 
Plagiarism and Parody

Plagiarism - the wholesale lifting of material from someone else's work - is not of itself illegal, it's just laziness and bad form.  It becomes an actionable offence if you infringe someone's copyright or trademark.
The one grey area here is parody.  If you are sending-up a writer, character or situation, it may be legitimate to use recognisable characters.  (There are, for example, large-scale published parodies of "The Hobbit" and "Harry Potter" where there is a recognisable similarity to the original source, but the characters or situations are exaggerated to humorous effect.)  If, however, the characters behave as they would behave in the original source, you have crossed the line from parody into breach of copyright.
 
 
Got all that? Good. The Guide to Getting Your Script Published will explain the submission process.