Reply
Respected Contributor
Posts: 4,057
Registered: ‎06-07-2010

Did anyone ever see The Christmas Card? It was a Hallmark movie in 2006. It is on all the time. Last night I turned on The Lucky One by Nicholas Sparks. It was the same story, with slight changes. How did Nicholas Sparks get away with passing the story on as his?

Honored Contributor
Posts: 11,153
Registered: ‎05-22-2012

Either because the writers of The Christmas Card didn't sue or gave him permission OR because someone who understands the laws better than I decided that it was different enough that it can be denied as coincidence. I think the latter is the case with The Christmas Card and The Lucky One. There are similarities, but there are also more differences than similarities. I wouldn't be surprised if you could trace similar stories back even further to WWII, the Korean War, or the Vietnam War. 

 

Often things pass just because someone decided that it wasn't worth years and years of lawyer fees and legal battles or because of deniability. There are LOTS of things out there that are ideas lifted from other things, including many famous superheros and the Oreo cookie.

 

And you should definitely read about Kimba the White Lion vs Simba of The Lion King: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/27/lion-king-kimba_n_6272316.html 

 

There was never a lawsuit over the similarities between Kimba and The Lion King and the similarities are pretty striking.

Honored Contributor
Posts: 12,110
Registered: ‎03-12-2010

Shakespeare could never have his plays published or performed today.  Every one of his dramas and comedies had a plot taken from prior source material.  Who knows, maybe he'd even be sued for the histories by the survivors of those portrayed.

 

I think (tell us what you think, Lori) this has gone too far.  Sure if a musician is walking down the street and hears a song and ten years later he writes a song that has the same chords (looking at you, Led Zeppelin) he probably did not consciously copy, he probably totally forgot ever hearing about it in the first place and now "Stairway to Heaven" is still tied up in litigation.

 

Yeah, we'd never have Shakespeare.  Or the Bible, all those people doing rewrites of pagan stories.  The pagans would have sued them out of existence.