posted
So what would fall into the scope of infringement of his patent? Certainly not all "zombie" stories. What about a similar story where the zombie state was not an answer to prayer but because of some scientific experiment? In short, what degree of similarity must be reached before it constitutes infringement?
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
Remember, he hasn't been granted anything yet. 18 months after one files a patent application, it's published. At this point, provisional rights attach.
If the application is ultimately denied, those rights mean nothing.
I'd like to see the actual patent.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Storylines should not be patentable. Patents are for inventions (not in the loosest sense where an invention is anything a human makes in any sense), not (among other things) abstract ideas. Just as no one can patent e=mc^2, no one can patent a plot twist.
Copyright is the mechanism for that.
Even looking at the patent application, the first claim, among others, is already completely covered by 13 going on 30, and I suspect by numerous other works.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Patents are an iffy proposition in the best of cases. Consider the telephone, for example. Elisha Gray (from my hometown of Highland Park, IL) invented the telephone. But Alexander Graham Bell got to the patent office first. Why should Gray have been prevented from profiting from the fruit of his creative mind? And that's leaving aside the fact that the phone in Bell's patent didn't even work, and Gray's did.
There's this person in the Chicago area who is going around copyrighting everyday terms. That's as dumb as this.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Perhaps you mean trademarking everyday terms? Copyright can't be used on something which is an everyday term, and wouldn't be granted (edit: that is, wouldn't be allowed to be registered; if a work is copyrightable, its automatically copyrighted upon creation).
quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Perhaps you mean trademarking everyday terms? Copyright can't be used on something which is an everyday term, and wouldn't be granted (edit: that is, wouldn't be allowed to be registered; if a work is copyrightable, its automatically copyrighted upon creation).
Yep. I meant trademarking.
Check this out. This guy and the plot patenter should be locked up in the same loony bin.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
I'm going to write a screenplay in which a kid prays to be a zombie until his college application letter comes, then wakes up 29 years later and realizes he's been a zombie all this time. And the college will be, get this, Harvard. And I'm going to call it The Zombie Gaze. There's no way that could be mistaken for the same story. It's airtight.
Well, other than the part where it still sucks and will never sell. Aside from that, though, it's golden.
Posts: 2804 | Registered: May 2003
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For one thing, Big was about a guy! 13 Going on 30 was about a girl, and it had a Michael Jackson dance-off scene (which was strangely absent from Big).
Sheesh! It's like no one else even watched the movies.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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