I did that with Doctor Who for the first novel-length story I've ever finished, I just did so as a fanfiction. Disappointed for the same reason you are in how the times have changed from when the art came first and the business came second to the other way around, but not willing to risk forking over millions challenging the rules until I actually have millions of dollars to fork over. Which will a) not likely happen in the first place, and b) even if it does, I'll spend most of that money on something more important instead of this. Though, since you bring up Conan Doyle: about his own work, he described Sherlock Holmes as being "as inhuman as a Babbage's calculating machine and just about as likely to fall in love." However, a playwright once asked him for permission to write a story that involved Sherlock Holmes getting married, and Doyle told the playwright that he could marry Holmes off, kill him off, or do whatever else with Holmes he wanted. If you absolutely want to make money off of a derivative work: just find a work that a) you enjoy in the first place, b) you would enjoy deriving your own work from, and c) most importantly, that the owner would give you explicit permission to derive your own work from. Like how the handler(s) of Ian Flemming's estate has/have been hiring other writers to continue the Bond series. My dad mentioned a while back how much it annoys him when the families of dead artists hold said artists' work hostage just so that they can make themselves a ton of money off of work that they didn't do. I'll have to ask him again about the specifics, but I believe I remember him agreeing that copyright should end after the creator's death. ... Granted, one of the greatest discoveries that I ever made about one of my characters came about from having to scour the internet for crazy-old music that absolutely had to be public domain, but that should be something writers are encouraged to do, not discouraged from not doing.
Fair use isn't going to be a lot of use in fiction, I think. Maybe for parody, to some extent, but that's not what most people are writing.
Fiction doesn't really fit all that well into that. I feel like this is a discussion that would benefit from @Steerpike 's involvement.
So, what about names? Do you think its fair for people to copyright names? And I am not talking the full name. I am saying for example, let's say Jk Rowling decided she wanted to copyright the name Harry, not just Harry Potter, but Harry. So no one can use the name Harry ever again. Marvel does that with their comic book names for example Venom. But I should be able to use the name Venom for a soldier, non symbiote, non marvel character. But I cannot. So at what point does copyright go too far?
I very much doubt that anyone could trademark (names are trademarked, not copyrighted) a single-word first name that's in common use. That is, of course they could trademark it in a specific commercial context; what I doubt is that they could make that name unusable everywhere else. I'm confident that "Bob's Burgers" is trademarked, and I'm equally confident that characters named "Bob" aren't being removed from novels everywhere. Venom isn't in common use to the same extent. You say that you can't use Venom as a character name. But have you gotten an actual lawyer's ruling on that?
I am more worried I can't use the name Venom. When he isn't even the same character as the Marvel character at all. But, considering how big Sony and Marvel are. I just worry.
If it's a super-hero-like character in a comic context, yeah, I'm afraid you're going to have a problem. I Am Not A Lawyer, but it sounds risky.
You need someone who Is A Lawyer. I don't think it should be an issue, but, again, Not A Lawyer, plus there's the People With Bigger Lawyers concern. (That is, even if you'd win, do you want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to make the point?)
Any copyright application for something as generic as 'Harry' would be rejected. As for Marvel and Venom, despite my Not A Lawyerness, I'm pretty sure that's only likely to apply when there's a chance of confusing the two characters. There was an issue a few years back with one company wanting to sue because another used the word 'Scrolls' in the title of its game. However, one of the games was a well known open world RPG series, and the other was a faux tabletop card game. No chance of confusing the two, and there was no case.
I've seen time and time again that including song lyrics in a novel/book is a big no-no without written permission and/or buying the rights, but I recently read a published book (almost non-fiction?) that was riddled with cited song lyrics (as in, they wrote out lines of lyrics and named the artist and song). Of course it's possible they paid/asked for that right, but... I have my doubts. Along those lines, what about citing text from other books? This includes inspirational heading quotes, as well as quotes within the novel text. Inspirational heading quotes never have page number citations, or even chapters, yet they seem to be allowed without question. (Correct me if I'm wrong). But if my character needed to read a book in order to learn how to do something (say, a "For Dummies" book), there are ways of course to not quote the book at all, but what if she does quote it, whether to herself or to another character? Maybe she takes notes. Maybe she wants the reader to know what she now knows. What are the protocols for including a book's (fiction or non) text within a novel? (I'm not saying I will do this, or even need to do it, but it crossed my mind and I just kept thinking about it.)
Make sure your snippets fall within Fair Use guidelines or make sure they're in the Public Domain. Or if you want to include an extended excerpt of a how-to or something similar, you can rewrite or modify the passage so that it contains the same information, but in non plagiaristic prose.
I can only speak from my own personal experience, but my publisher won't touch a manuscript with song lyrics in it unless the author has written permission from the copyright holder. Was the book you read self-published or traditionally published?
Definitely traditionally. Who knows what they did to get away with it. At least lyrics is one thing I try not to even consider, no matter what!
Public domain is one thing, but I would not recommend going for Fair Use. Fair Use protects you from losing frivolous lawsuits by record companies, it doesn't protect you from they trying. Big companies will often file lawsuits that they know they can't win just to prove to everyone else that if you want to even try, you'll need to pay thousands in legal fees. You don't need to stay in the bounds of the law if you keep the cost of justice higher than what most people can afford. I like paraphrasing instead: "Carl Sagan once said that science is not only compatible with spirituality, but is a profound source of it." flows better than "Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality." - Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World.
Yep. I would never want to argue fair use with someone who has bigger lawyers than I can afford--which would be almost any corporation.
Seeing how you are in the U.S Here you go! https://www.writingforums.org/resources/copyright-law.217/ This will take you to the U.S Copyright law website. They have a reader-friendly version to help people better understand this complicated area of writing. And remember, in cases of all legal questions you should contact a lawyer.
The biggest reason this advice is given so often is that people don't understand copyright law and would rather steer clear of things they don't understand. Having said that, the best reason to follow this advice is that, usually, quotes like those are just not valuable. If you were quoting one of the great works, no one would mention it--but you're not, and suddenly "copyright" becomes an issue. Genesis 1:1 is not a problem. Verse 1, line 1 of "that song by the Beastie Boys" is a problem--not just because "copyright" but because, "Who the hell are the Beastie Boys?"
Quoting song lyrics almost always requires permission. (Not an attorney, but much experience in another life with songwriters' copyright administration.) The most commonly acceptable form of Fair Use is when you refer to a tiny snippet for context only in a critical discussion, so the reader knows what you're discussing. If you're trying to convey your own thought and opinion about the song, it's more likely to be Fair Use. If the lyric itself is conveying the thought, it's probably not Fair Use. Put another way, usually you can talk about words as part of a larger idea but not republish those words as the idea. There are a lot of gray areas in this, and that's certainly not the only example of Fair Use. Most of the gray areas are firmly on the copyright holder's side. It's all those expensive gray areas that book publishers want to avoid, so they either have a blanket policy of no, or they only allow it if you secured permission on your own. Also, permissions can take months to secure, so waiting for licensing can screw up a production schedule. Another reason publishers want to avoid it is, things get tricky when, say, the singer-songwriter who wrote it is repped by Agency ABC and the author is with competing Agency XYZ. Agencies like to keep all the money flowing to their own talent, even if that specific form of income (such as songwriting income) doesn't actually flow through the agency itself (which in most cases it does not).
What about copious mentions of books without quoting from them? One of my characters is rather prone to likening her life to book characters'.
You can mention fictional characters without quoting from them, yes. And if the book is old enough, you can quote anyway as the text will be in the public domain. The rationale I've heard about song lyrics is that one of the rules of fair use is that only tiny bits of the original should be quoted (original language is more technical, obviously!). A line or two from a book-length work is a tiny bit of the whole, but a line or two from a song could be a substantial portion of the original. Plus the aggressive lawyers thing, but this is the reason the lawyers' aggression is likely to be rewarded by the courts.
