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#1: CS characters and copyright issues Author: Róisín, Location: Ireland

Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 11:34 pm
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[This thread was split from the one congratulating Ray on her new filler.]

[please see here for Jennie's research into the matter[/url].

Hmm my first reaction was to think that Narendra couldn't have used the same names that Allan chose because they were copyright Allan/GGB. But that wouldn't make sense, as every other CS character used by Narendra is also under copyright by GGB now as well (since they bought the rights from Chloe Rutherford). How does that work with BP/Matador? Do the GGB just adopt a lax attitude towards other fillers or are EBD's characters in the public domain? (Although I thought that took eighty years since her death Confused

)

Last edited by Róisín on Fri Feb 08, 2008 2:58 pm; edited 2 times in total

#2: Author: Mia, Location: London

Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 11:38 pm
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I believe it's actually legally very difficult to copyright a character. The CS characters aren't legally copyrighted, despite the declaration in all the GGBP books, they're too generic I believe.

#3: Author: Lesley, Location: Allhallows, Kent

Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 11:42 pm
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You cannot copyright characters - copyright means the actual words themselves - so I couldn't publish any part of a book written by EBD, or anyone else for that matter. Anything quoted from a book must be referenced. However characters themselves, names, etc cannot be copyrighted. They can be trademarked - which is why Disney and JK Rowling's characters cannot be used by anyone else.

#4: Author: Fiona Mc, Location: Bendigo, Australia

Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 5:49 am
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Congratulations Ray. Thats fabulous news. I can't wait to read it

#5: Author: Vikki, Location: Sitting on an iceberg, freezing to death!!!

Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 2:48 pm
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Very, very exciting news! Well done Ray!!!

#6: Author: Tan, Location: London via Newcastle Australia

Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 2:22 pm
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Wow! So many talented people and authors. And so many books to save up for!

Well done Ray!

#7: Author: aitchemelle, Location: West Sussex

Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 7:05 pm
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Congratulations Ray Smile

#8: Author: Frogize, Location: Perth, Western Australia

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 11:17 am
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Oh, wow! I'll need to save for ever just to buy all the fill-ins!

Can't wait to read it, Ray! Congratulations!

#9: Author: Caroline, Location: Manchester

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 3:29 pm
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champagnedrinker wrote:

Is Caroline's "Deira & the CS" the same as the one that is being serialised in FOCS, or are those a taster for the whole thing?

Well, kinda both...

It's something I did for Juliet too - let FOCS publish the first couple of chapters as a standalone to tease everyone. So, there is one more part to come in the November FOCS mag, and then it is back to me to write the whole thing (I have been very slack this year...!).

The bits already published will be in the final book, but going on past experience they will probably change / expand / whatever to serve the needs of the rest of the plot as I invent it.

Particularly with Deira, as I'm not Irish and am therefore kind of writing this as EBD would have done (stereotypes ahoy!), I really wanted to gauge reactions too. I want to write the book, but I don't want it to be chock full of anachronisms and stuff that Irish CBBers and FOCSers will be offended by....

#10: Author: champagnedrinker,

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 3:57 pm
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Well I really enjoyed it ... or should that be *am* really enjoying it. I hope you aren't going to leave it on too much of a cliff hanger, if it's going to be some time before the rest is written Smile

#11: Author: Kate, Location: Ireland

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 3:58 pm
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Caroline wrote:

Particularly with Deira, as I'm not Irish and am therefore kind of writing this as EBD would have done (stereotypes ahoy!), I really wanted to gauge reactions too. I want to write the book, but I don't want it to be chock full of anachronisms and stuff that Irish CBBers and FOCSers will be offended by....

We could proofread the whole thing? *looks beseeching*

#12: Author: Pat, Location: Doncaster

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 7:40 pm
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That's cheating Kate! Wink

#13: Author: Catriona, Location: South Yorkshire

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 8:13 pm
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Well done Ray - how exciting!

#14: Author: leahbelle, Location: Kilmarnock

Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2007 3:56 pm
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That's great news, Ray. Another fill in to look forward to!! Very Happy

#15: Author: Mia, Location: London

Posted: Fri Oct 05, 2007 10:48 pm
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Lesley wrote:

You cannot copyright characters - copyright means the actual words themselves - so I couldn't publish any part of a book written by EBD, or anyone else for that matter. Anything quoted from a book must be referenced. However characters themselves, names, etc cannot be copyrighted. They can be trademarked - which is why Disney and JK Rowling's characters cannot be used by anyone else.

Didn't Neil Gaiman just copyright some characters? I'm sure I read it somewhere... *vague* US law might be different though.

#16: Author: Pat, Location: Doncaster

Posted: Sat Oct 06, 2007 7:13 pm
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I have a feeling that the problem is that it's virtually impossible to prove that a character is sufficiently unique. There was an attempt - in the US - to copyright one of the famous fictional detectives and it failed because it wasn't a unique character, but was too much of a generic type. This is why characters like HP are trademarked instead.

#17: Author: Chatsi, Location: Surrey

Posted: Mon Oct 08, 2007 6:40 pm
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Fantastic news. Just what was needed, can't wait. Very Happy

#18: Author: patmac, Location: Yorkshire England

Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2007 7:23 pm
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I've only just found this and am thrilled to hear about it - 2 years Sad

Oh well, I'll just have to wait.

Well done Ray!

#19: Author: Travellers Joy, Location: Middle of Nowhere

Posted: Tue Oct 16, 2007 8:19 pm
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Mia wrote:

I believe it's actually legally very difficult to copyright a character. The CS characters aren't legally copyrighted, despite the declaration in all the GGBP books, they're too generic I believe.

I believe that's still open to debate, at least in the States - I haven't checked to see what the situation is in the UK or other parts of the world. But I have friends published in the US who have been warned by their publishers not to encourage, support or otherwise condone fanfiction in their worlds or they run the risk of losing their rights to 'own' their characters and the world they've created - ie those characters and settings enter into the public domain if the author cedes his/her rights to them. I wouldn't have thought the warning necessary if the authors don't own the rights to the characters they've created! And as I understand it, GGBP receive royalties from the books published through other avenues - which presumably they couldn't do if they didn't own the rights.

Betula O'Neill and Sally Dore are running a conference in Bristol next year as an alternative to the FOCS/GGBP conference (which won't be happening) and I think Ruth Jolly, the GGBP Chalet Series editor, will be doing a session on writing (and being edited) for GGBP books. I can't remember the exact title but it's something along those lines anyway. Should be quite interesting, especially for those interested in what GGBP is actually looking for and how the process works.

Travellers Joy

#20: Author: Mia, Location: London

Posted: Tue Oct 16, 2007 10:53 pm
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Travellers Joy wrote:

And as I understand it, GGBP receive royalties from the books published through other avenues - which presumably they couldn't do if they didn't own the rights.

Where did you hear that cos I've heard the exact opposite from my friend who knows A&C very well?

ETA: US law is different, (as I said..), as Neil Gaiman has recently copyrighted two characters.

#21: Author: Travellers Joy, Location: Middle of Nowhere

Posted: Tue Oct 16, 2007 11:09 pm
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Mia wrote:

Travellers Joy wrote:

And as I understand it, GGBP receive royalties from the books published through other avenues - which presumably they couldn't do if they didn't own the rights.

Where did you hear that cos I've heard the exact opposite from my friend who knows A&C very well?

Direct from Ann M-H herself.

#22: Author: Lesley, Location: Allhallows, Kent

Posted: Wed Oct 17, 2007 6:07 am
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Receive royalties from what books published? Because they have not received, nor are they entitled to receive royalties from those published independently.

#23: Author: Pat, Location: Doncaster

Posted: Wed Oct 17, 2007 7:56 pm
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Absolutely. The author if each book owns the copyright & gets the royalties.

#24: Author: Rachael,

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2007 4:41 pm
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Oh wow - just seen this ... congratulations, Ray and thoroughly desereved - you are a great writer!
This may galvanise me into catching up with GGB reprints and fill-ins!!

Happy day!! Very Happy

#25: Author: Jennie, Location: Cambridgeshire

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2007 7:50 pm
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All UK registered Trademarks can be searched here.

www.ipo.gov.uk/tm.htm

So far, the CS has not been registered as such with the Intellectual Property Office in the UK.

Whatever Anne and Clarissa say in their publications, unless and until they register the CS as a trademark and further trademark each single, separate character, they cannot claim any intellectual property rights in the school or said character,

Because they own the copyrights to EBD's texts, they are entitled to prevent publication by any other publishing company, but only of the texts as written by EBD.

If they decline to publish a fill-in, they lose out, and by declining, forfeit all rights to royalties on such fill-ins.

We went into this quite exhaustively a few years ago when the members of this board discussed forming a company to publish fill-ins written by CBB members, and I actually did a lot of research about this, including e-mailing the IPO to discover where we would stand. As long as we don't plagiarise extensively and as long as there are no trademarks on CS and characters, we are perfectly free to write about them in any form we choose, and to publish.

ETA: I've PM'd Fatima to ask her if this could be stickied, perhaps in Miss dene's Office, so everyone has the information and the link so they can do their own searches with very little trouble.

#26: Author: Fiona Mc, Location: Bendigo, Australia

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2007 6:24 am
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Jennie wrote:

We went into this quite exhaustively a few years ago when the members of this board discussed forming a company to publish fill-ins written by CBB members, and I actually did a lot of research about this, including e-mailing the IPO to discover where we would stand. As long as we don't plagiarise extensively and as long as there are no trademarks on CS and characters, we are perfectly free to write about them in any form we choose, and to publish.

So what happened and why did the CBB decide not to go ahead with publishing fill-ins?

#27: Author: Pat, Location: Doncaster

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2007 12:57 pm
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They DO publish fill-ins! Caroline's 'Juliet' for one. But not all of them. Not mine or Lesley's for a start. They just don't get anything from the fill-ins that they don't publish - which is quite right and proper. If GGB turn down a fill-in there's nothing to stop the author publishing elsewhere. They have their own ideas about what constitutes a fill-in, which is fair enough.

Edited to add: sorry! Miss-read the previous post!

Last edited by Pat on Wed Oct 24, 2007 1:00 pm; edited 1 time in total

#28: Author: Jennie, Location: Cambridgeshire

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2007 12:58 pm
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Speaking for myself, it was a problem of logistics and finance.

#29: Author: champagnedrinker,

Posted: Sat Nov 03, 2007 4:32 pm
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jennie
I'm not sure what logistics you're talking about, but don't forget that there is Lulu - where you can upload texts & then people buy them. You don't have to pay out for the initial publishing costs. I've had a couple of books from there & they look perfectly, well, perfectly "normal"!

#30: Author: Fiona Mc, Location: Bendigo, Australia

Posted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 7:01 am
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Jennie wrote:

Speaking for myself, it was a problem of logistics and finance.

Thanks Jennie.

#31: Author: RoseCloke, Location: In my pretty box-like room

Posted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 11:01 am
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Thanks to a recent controversy with Harry Potter (nothing to do with me - just something in the fandom), I've learnt a little about copyright and trademarks. Copyright is legally binding, but you can only have a trademark on something as long as it's unique and the public recognise it as your property.

For example, Hoover can no longer claim their name as a brand mark because all the over-exposure means that 'hoover' has become a general noun instead of something particular to them. I suppose the best CS example would be 'solid lump of comfort' - we all use it so frequently here that it could be argued that it's part of our vocabulary and therefore isn't anything special in of itself.

Disclaimer: I'm not a law student and I could have got that all horribly wrong Laughing

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