The most famous case of plagiarism was Janet Daily, who copied the situation, style, setting, and characters from three Nora Roberts novels. She ended up settling the case with Roberts out of court.
It's harder to prove than most people think. I remember going nuts in law school...and then later as copyright specialist for a publishing company. The law is contradictory in places, shifts constantly, and open to interpretation. Plagiarism in of itself, while inethical, isn't illegal. It depends on how and what you are plagiarizing. Plagiarizing fanfiction is sort of considered an oxymoron by the copyright law community. Granted, fanfiction is permitted under the Fair Use Doctrine, but not completely. Also copyright lawyers don't tend to see fanfic as "original" or "distinctive" so not protectable under copyright law. (I do, but a lot don't. And to be fair, a lot of fanfic I've read isn't original.)
That's the difficult test -- is it original and distinctive? If generic or standard or boilerplate...not copyrightable and no one cares if you use it. That's why as a writer it's important to develope a distinctive style, otherwise people can copy snippets from your work, as Clare did from Dean, and no one is the wiser. Dean doesn't have a distinctive style. That's my problem with Dean. It reminded me of too many other books I read, and I couldn't tell them apart.
Of course, as the Good Wife demonstrated beautifully last week in regards to a song -- copyright infringement and plagiarism is often in the eye of the beholder. Which makes it uncertain how it will come out in court.
That's why Clare wasn't charged. If she copied anything, it clearly wasn't considered distinctive or enough for the original holders to bother fighting her over it. She didn't do what Janet Daily did. If Daily did just what Clare did, she probably would have been fine...a few phrases here and there. A lot of writers steal from each other. King does. Patterson does. And quite a few romance novelists. Day stole bits from EL James, James stole from Judith McNaught...but what they stole is so boilerplate, that it's not illegal. Just JK Rowling's style is similar to Ronald Dahl, but not enough to be considered copyright infringement.
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It's harder to prove than most people think. I remember going nuts in law school...and then later as copyright specialist for a publishing company. The law is contradictory in places, shifts constantly, and open to interpretation. Plagiarism in of itself, while inethical, isn't illegal. It depends on how and what you are plagiarizing. Plagiarizing fanfiction is sort of considered an oxymoron by the copyright law community. Granted, fanfiction is permitted under the Fair Use Doctrine, but not completely. Also copyright lawyers don't tend to see fanfic as "original" or "distinctive" so not protectable under copyright law. (I do, but a lot don't. And to be fair, a lot of fanfic I've read isn't original.)
That's the difficult test -- is it original and distinctive? If generic or standard or boilerplate...not copyrightable and no one cares if you use it. That's why as a writer it's important to develope a distinctive style, otherwise people can copy snippets from your work, as Clare did from Dean, and no one is the wiser. Dean doesn't have a distinctive style. That's my problem with Dean. It reminded me of too many other books I read, and I couldn't tell them apart.
Of course, as the Good Wife demonstrated beautifully last week in regards to a song -- copyright infringement and plagiarism is often in the eye of the beholder. Which makes it uncertain how it will come out in court.
That's why Clare wasn't charged. If she copied anything, it clearly wasn't considered distinctive or enough for the original holders to bother fighting her over it. She didn't do what Janet Daily did. If Daily did just what Clare did, she probably would have been fine...a few phrases here and there. A lot of writers steal from each other. King does. Patterson does. And quite a few romance novelists. Day stole bits from EL James, James stole from Judith McNaught...but what they stole is so boilerplate, that it's not illegal. Just JK Rowling's style is similar to Ronald Dahl, but not enough to be considered copyright infringement.