posted
So using the names of current/prior leading scientists in their fields of study. If you said your fictional protag worked with such and such on project X, which was a real project, a real scientist, is that a copyright issue? It seems to me there is a lot of leeway given on figures like this. Just like using past/current presidents in fictional spy thrillers.
But I can't quite pin down the rule on this.
If you say your protag accompanied Tomas Frieden, CDC, to help combat Ebola, in 2014 in West Africa (A real situation and pathologist) is this a copyright issue even though hundreds of nameless medical professionals did?
Can you reference an actual event and yet change the name of the real pathologist or can you only make a similar fictional event and fictional pathologist?
Your thoughts, and reference material if you have any on the matter.
posted
I don't think it's a question of copyright because that would be claiming that something written by someone else was written by you.
There's a whole movie full of scenes where an individual was inserted into historical events, and it worked fine that way (que FORREST GUMP).
What I'd suggest you do if you want to reference an actual event that an invented character is supposed to have participated in, you have your character witness the real people doing the real things they did, and let your character react to and comment on those things.
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Copyright infringement is using another's intellectual property without express permission or use license from the copyright owner. Plagiarism is the taking of another's intellectual property and claiming it as one's own without regard to copyright acknowledgment and source attribution. Copyright infringement and plagiarism may overlap.
Trademark infringement is the use of another's registered identity artifacts for purposes other than those allowed by the owner(s) thereof. Patent infringement is the use of another's registered inventions for one's own purposes. Those are the four areas of intellectual property law. Exceptions and counter-exceptions abound.
The given circumstances above entail privacy infringement potentials more so than intellectual property infringement considerations. A useful guidance is that living, private persons are subject to privacy rights protections that public persons in their public celebrity lives and activities are much less so entitled.
Regardless of whether a writer and publisher believe they are immune from privacy infringement litigation, the possibility of litigation, at least a strategic lawsuit against public participation, SLAPP (Wikipedia), behooves a blunt assessment of and strategic avoidance process of the risks.
The Historical Novel by György Lukács, 1962, a Hungarian Marxist, Soviet Marxist rhetorician, too, details the history of historical fiction and its conventions. One notable point Lukács asserts is that, when portraying historical persons, or notable present-day persons, a best practice is to portray such persons and their feats through a separate persona's subjective and personal lens, invented or otherwise.
One common amateur mistake is to portray a notable person whose life and fame or infamy are more or less well-known and take creative license with accepted truth for dramatic effect, that is, dramatic movement. Or more or less derivatively repeat what's known about such a person to a dull and banal, diluted degree.
Use of another persona to subjectively portray such persons and as well achieve dramatic effect avoids questionable and challengeable dramatized inventions. As well, those sorts of features and facets then avoid privacy infringement litigation potentials and risks.
Exceptions to the above include Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, 2012 motion picture directed by Timur Bekmambetov, 2010 novel written by Seth Grahame-Smith and the screenplay's writer; and Pride + Prejudice + Vampires, 2009 novel also by Seth Grahame-Smith, 2016 motion picture directed by Burr Steers. Of late, too, nonfiction political thriller novels have depicted present-day living public persons' private activities in dodgy circumstances through subjective lenses.
In any case, a consideration that trumps litigious misgivings is if a creative work's social satire commentary value to society exceeds minor to moderate privacy harms done, as do parody, lampoon, and spoof to copyright infringement and idea plagiarism. None of which, though, is a guarantee against SLAPPs. An idea worth consideration, ironic or otherwise, is to "laugh along with them" rather than "laugh at them."
"I see you worked for Thomas Friedan during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. You're obviously no stranger to risking your life in extreme circumstances."
I just wanted to know if I can insert the real pathologist's name or if I had to change it.
or
"Yes, I have met Stephen Hawking twice, once when he was younger, he called my proof on gravitational waves the start of a good Jules Verne novel. And two, when they recently announced our findings from LIGO that gravitational waves did exist, and the implications of their effects on space-time distortion, Stephen ran over my foot with his wheelchair and told me if my science had any merit I would have been forewarned by the proceeding ripple in space-time to move my foot."
"Did that really happen?"
"No, but it sounds a lot better than he refused to comment on such fantastical nonsense when asked."
It's situations like this where real events and people are being referenced for your fictional story. Just didn't want to cross any unknown lines.
posted
For whatever my opinion may be worth, those examples sound okay.
Neither are libelous, so far as I can see, which is probably the biggest concern in referencing real people and events.
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And thanks to extrinsic for the clarifiction on copyright vs plagarism. It occurred to me after I posted about that what I described was more plagarism than copyright, but it was late.
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Aesthetic considerations next? Name exposition, in social situations known as name dropping, a type of gloat or brag, the vice of pride, maybe envy, wants dramatic development to blunt its writer smartness: antagonism, causation, tension; complication, conflict, and tone. Incidental name exposition on its face otherwise, such incidences want subtext to transcend their dramatic emptiness.
The second example above accomplishes a dramatic effect. Obviously, the first is on the fly, undramatic, and neither meant to be, per se, dramatic. The Stephen Hawking foot rollover gag bit isn't yet cliché, either, and is a notable public artifact.
The dramatic effect of the second one raises a touch of dramatic irony subtext in the setup segment first paragraph, too, though a contrary type, an Oh yeah? this is believable? of our host Orson Scott Card's three questions every reader asks; rather than cued-in dramatic irony, is held-off dramatic irony.
The Oh yeah? question the second speaker asks outright on behalf of readers, a type of reader surrogate, and a punchline setup straight line, a delay, or suspension, segment. Then the satisfaction segment portrays the first speaker as unreliable.
The delay segment wants more dramatic development if for keeps, perhaps stronger intimation of the second speaker's disbelief.
The matters of heck and libel, slander and calumny, and defamation that Ms. Dalton Woodbury raises are an entire other legal matter of which writers best practice take caution and be aware. Those topics and privacy considerations are covered amply and generally enough for writers in The Associated Press Style Book: 2017. Peculiar, though, neither libel nor privacy even mentioned in other style manuals or grammar handbooks. Copyeditor handbooks, yes.
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