posted
Does anyone know if it is permissible to mention another author's fiction character in your story as if he is a real person?
For example, I was planning on having my character see and have some dialog about a portrait of Conan the Barbarian in one scene. Conan would be a real, but long dead, historical figure in this world.
posted
I had always wondered that same question. I recently read Stephen King's newest Wolves of the Calla. He has included quite a few things just like that. For example, without spoiling anything he uses a "snitch" from Harry Potter. He modifies it slightly, but still uses it's name. Maybe this helps, but it doesn't verify anything.
Posts: 27 | Registered: Jul 2003
|
posted
I do not have any proof either, just a for instance. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It is made up of a collection of literary figures: Tom Sawyer, Mina Harker, Dr. Jekyl, etc... But maybe they just paid for it.
Posts: 471 | Registered: Sep 2003
|
posted
Well, I'm still dying to know if anyone knows the answer to the original question, but about the snitch....J.K. Rowling does not have the market cornered on the word, or even the object. You can't copyright a word, and the concept is not original enough to be cconsidered intellectual property.
And I would bet that in the movie TLOEG they had all the necessary permissions, because if not that would be a very clear violation of intellectual property laws.
[This message has been edited by Christine (edited January 06, 2004).]
posted
If the character is from a work that is no longer copyrighted, then you can use that character without any problems. (Caveat: if the character is a trademark, then you cannot use it in a way that might lead people to believe that your work is produced or approved by the owner of the trademark.)
If the character is from a work that is still copyrighted, then you may have some problems. (I don't think copyright has expired yet on the earliest Conan works.)
If Conan the Barbarian is a historical figure in the world of your story, what you're saying is that the work is set in Conan's universe. As such, your work might be considered a "derivative work," which is therefore a violation of the copyright. Unless you're writing Conan fan-fiction or for an authorized Conan publication, you should probably ditch the reference because other potential publishers might worry about potential legal problems.
The Supreme Court has given special exemption to copyright law to parodies, so using a character in a parody would be permissible if it is parodying that character.
posted
I believe my usage in the story would be considered a parody.
The world that I'm building also will have other recognizible characters from history and mythology as "real" historical figures. King Arthur, St. George, Pocohontas, etc.
The story itself isn't intended to be a parody, but I'm striving for a type of humor. I guess I'll just write the scene with the reference with the knowledge that I may have to ditch it later.
Okay. I just did a search on Conan. I was under the mistaken impression that Conan's Cimmeria was the same as the historical Cimmeria. It's not. So, I guess I'll have to tread carefully here.
posted
I just read Connie Willis' Nebula award-winning "To Say Nothing of the Dog" - the name itself comes from Jerome K. Jerome's "Three Men in a Boat(To Say Nothing of the Dog!)" and she uses the characters in a scene in her book. Her mc goes back in time and encounters Jerome's characters at one point (it is just an interesting interlude - her story does not center on that scene or those characters by any means). The mc even talks about wow, look at that, Jerome's you-know-whos...
So she is pretty explicitly referring to and even using Jerome's story and characters - her book came out in 1998, his in 1889. Hers is not a parody, though it certainly has comical elements (a section from pages 159-160 had me laughing so hard I had tears streaming down my face and couldn't breathe - haven't had that happen since my first time with Hithchiker's Guide a long time ago!).
I think you are allowed reference such characters, as long as, as you were already told, you don't set your stuff in the Conan universe - but you could do something like it. If all else fails, is there any reason you could not find out from the publisher if you can make such a reference?
Where are the agents who might know such thing???
[This message has been edited by punahougirl84 (edited January 06, 2004).]
posted
If you read Three Men in a Boat, you’ll see that Connie Willis is also copying the comic style of the earlier novel, as well as some plot elements – such as the three men in the boat with the dog. To Say Nothing of the Dog is a homage to the original work. Which is the funny bits from a travel log Jerome K. Jerome wrote (the publisher was only interested in the funny bits), an the piece was written in the Victorian era of the nefarious pen wipe (not 1990 – maybe this is the copyright of the particular edition you saw?), so while I don’t know the date, the work is probably in the public domain by 1998.
Isn’t that why League of Extraordinary Gentlemen can use such character as well – they are all from older works in the public domain. (Isn’t the expiration on copyright 70 years after the author’s death – I should probably check that before I post, but I seem to remember it’s something like that).
posted
As for the snitch, that is not a character, it is a creature/breed/species. Think of it like nouns. A proper noun, or specific individual character is protected under copyright. A common noun, or type of mythological creature is not. It is an idea, which is not copyrightable, but a character is.
Conan is the intellectual property of Conan Properties International LLC.
Oh, by the way, all of the characters from the League of Extraordinary Gentlement are expired copyrights. You're safe with any material over 95 years old (in some cases, 75 years or less, check the individual work.)
posted
I have a fairly simple way of remembering the three infringements...
Copyright : You nicked my words! Intellectual Property : You nicked my story! Trademark : You nicked my registered name!
This certainly isn't a copyright infringement - "Conan The Barbarian" is not enough text to qualify.
Depending on how much else from the "Conan" world you pull in will depend on whether or not it is an Intellectual Property infringement. There are plenty of examples where other people's characters are mentioned in fiction. Sometimes indirectly, other times less so. Intellectual property cases are fraught and complex - and it seems to me that every one is different. I think that someone would be unlikely to prosecute or complain if all you had was a moment when someone looked at a picture and was told "That's the great hero Conan.", provided you included nothing else from the Conan universe that is not generic fantasy stuff. (Is there anything in the Conan universe that is not generic fantasy stuff?)
If you were actually to have Conan appear, that would be an entirely different issue.
Trademarks are more complicated still. Trademarking exists to prevent people passing off things as being products of another company - thus you can't produce "Fuji" cameras if you aren't Fuji. When it comes to fiction, you are prevented from calling your work "Conan The Barbarian and the Seven Peach Trees of Lawksabove" because that's passing your story off as an official Conan story. However, there doesn't seem to be much restriction on using trademarked names to refer to products of that company (or even mythical future products of that company), so you could have someone using Windows Longhorn in a story set somewhere around 2015. Indeed, William Gibson used trademarks extensively in Neuromancer. It's perfectly legitimate to have a character using "Sellotape" (tm), rather than forcing them to use "sticky tape", for example.
posted
I don't think Terry Pratchett got into trouble over Cohen the Barbarian...
I don't think copyright really applies here. You aren't actually copying anything. (Although note: I am not a lawyer, some lawyers seem to think copyright does apply, hence the fact that they send sometimes send cease & desist letters to people publishing fan fiction citing copyright laws, but my understanding is that this has never been tested in court and is (a) unlikely to ever get that far and (b) would likely fail if it did)
Trademarks are a concern here. But there is an awful lot of ground that can be made in terms of fair usage over a trademark: for instance, Microsoft do not have the right to make me remove their trademark from this post. Only if I was using their name in some way to sell something would they have a case...
In your case, I think it would be OK if the 'borrowed' characters are only incidentally mentioned. If they play a significant role in the story, it could be argued that their identity forms a significant part of the commercial value of the story, at which point you would have to start worrying about trademark issues.
Hope that helps a bit.
[All registered trademarks included above are the property of their owners, which really ought to go without saying, but I thought I ought to mention it...]
posted
I'd recommend that you make an allusion to Conan the Barbarian rather than be totally explicit about who's in the portrait.
(By the way, would this be a portrait done of him when he was a king, or just a barbarian?)
The thing that's cool about allusions is that those readers who recognize the object of the allusion feel particularly smart and will like you as an author for helping them feel that way.
Of course, you have to make the allusion interesting and meaningful for those readers who don't recognize the object of the allusion, so allusions are a bit more challenging to writers than merely naming the object (also known as "spoon-feeding the reader").
The real question about whether or not to include anything in a story (and this is from Orson Scott Card) is how crucial that thing is to the story. I've heard him say many times that if something can't fight for the right to be included in a story then maybe you really don't need it there after all. Anything that you don't really, REALLY need should be tossed (especially in short stories).
posted
Thanks for all the good advice. It seems I didn't answer your question, Kathleen.
It would be a portrait of Conan the Barbarian. That's important because one of the characters in the scene is commenting about the offensive nature of calling a foreigner a "barbarian."
I suppose I could just as easily use "Bob the Barbarian," but that lacks the comforting pop-culture reference.
Printer-friendly view of this topic
