Who thinks Eragon is a copy of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings?

Or look up Vladimir Propp and see how well Eragon and Star Wars both fit his analysis of the folk tale.

 

And here I thought I was the only one who noticed the similarities. . .
Yes, they're almost identical. How's this? Eragon's adopted mentor (a hermit, Brom) was killed by the second-in-command bad guy (Durza.) to give Eragon and his allies time to escape the evil fortress after rescuing the foreign princess. Luke's adopted mentor (a hermit, Old Ben Kenobi) was killed by the second-in-command bad guy (Darth vader) to give Luke and his allies time to escape the evil battle station after rescuing the foreign princess.

In both cases, note, the old mentor once also belonged to the same order that they train their pupil to join.
In both cases, the old mentor dies the same way, and both Eragon and Luke find an even older mentor in a giant forest after winning an important battle with the Empire. It is simply called the Empire both in Star Wars and the Inheritance Cycle.

There are other similarites as well, with location names and other plot events, but I believe that those have been pointed out by others.

I've read the posts that basically say "Well, he's 15, we can't blame him for writing what he likes." That's true. I've written my share of fan fiction as well. But at a certain point, you have no business publishing something that shares so many similarities. If you want to write something so blatantly un-original, don't try to market it. Paolini outright copied the plot of the first Star Wars movie, merely reskinning it as a Tolkein-esque world populated by earth-dwelling, crude dwarves and tree-dwelling, peaceful elves.

Oh, and people who say that there were never grounds for a lawsuit should reconsider. George Lucas got some acknowledgments on the back of the book on copies released after I certain date. I forget the specifics, but Paolini only avoided a lawsuit by giving credit for inspiration to George Lucas. The matter is pretty much settled, however, so he's not going to get sued for plagiarism as far as I can tell. I find this unfortunate, because I would be devastated if someone copied and repainted my ideas in such a way.

I get really worked up about this issue. It's shocking to me that copying one paragraph of text will get you fines or a criminal sentence, yet copying something much more vital- a plot- (though avoiding copying anything word for word) is largely ignored. If something like this happened to me. . . If I wrote a hit and people immeditely buried it in thinly veiled clones. . . I would be incredibly depressed for years.

Incidentally, I was a fan of Paolini for a few years. He was my inspiration. After doing research into this topic, however, I curse his very name.

 

If you have good Agents and Lawyers and people who watch out for this stuff, there's about a 70% less of a chance of people getting away with something like that. As a prime example, JK Rowling and her group of lawyers had filed 7-8 different lawsuits all on the the people who wrote stuff just like Harry Potter. She won almost every single case. So if your that concerned about that Metus, make sure you have some badass Lawyers and people who support that region of work. You'll feel much better.

 

I think that there is a fine line when it comes to lawsuits on other author's works. Yeah, there could be those cases where someone will copycat a popular book so that they can sell more of their own, but sometimes in life obviously there can be coincidences so it can be hard to prove. In addition, in terms of the exact legal issues involved, I do not see how lawyers can get around the Freedom of Speech first amendment right that everyone is supposed to have and still successfully sue writers for copycat pieces. Even if they are imitations, I think constitutional rights have to overrule any attempt to restrict or punish authors who publish written works, therefore preventing any legal actions to be taken against them.

 

Copyright is unrelated to freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is the right to express beliefs and ideas without unwarranted government restriction, not the right to pass off somebody else's work off as your own.

 

I really don't know how copying an Author's work is violating the right of free speech...