Hollywood stealing ideas!(?)

Writers' ideas are poached all the time.
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A great idea and $10 will buy you a cup of coffee: ideas aren't worth much without a good script to go with them, which is precisely why ideas can't be copyrighted.

I think about half a dozen people have seen my first feature script that I wrote years ago: yet after writing it I discovered a novel which had a similar plot and a year or so back someone released a movie based on a similar idea. Does that really mean that one of those people gave my script to the people who made the movie and sent it back to the 1950s in a time-warp so that the guy who wrote the novel could base it on mine, or that most ideas are so common that people come up with the same thing all the time?
 
It's true--most of the time your idea just isn't that original. Someone else somewhere is pitching it, writing it, or shooting it. But poaching still happens. I've seen it. I also think that there's some undefined point where an idea becomes a "story" and is therefore protected. If I tell someone I want to make a movie about a kid who sees dead people, well sorry that's just an idea. If someone makes the movie, I can't complain because it was just an idea. But if I write this:

A child psychiatrist is confronted one night by his former patient who he failed to help. After the patient shoots the psychiatrist in the stomach and kills himself, the psychiatrist can't stop thinking about it. A few months later he is hired to help a troubled boy who has many of the same problems his other patient had. The psychiatrist sees a chance to redeem himself, but doubts his ability to reach the boy, particularly when the boy claims to see ghosts who don't know they're dead. Eventually, the psychiatrist comes to learn that he himself is dead and the boy is the only one who sees him.

If I wrote that one paragraph and pitched it, I think it's starting to get closer to copyrighted writing. It's an idea that's now expressed in the form of a very small story. Just like when that guy pitches to Deep Space Nine and has a concept with characters and story beats and a beginning, middle and end, he's ripped off when Deep Space Nine goes ahead and makes the episode without paying him.

The "length" of the "story" is not relevant to whether it's an idea or a copyrighted piece of work. Aldiss's "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long" is only five pages. Much shorter than many pitches that fly around Hollywood. But Aldiss's story was the basis of Spielberg's film A.I.--and frankly there's even very little similarity between the movie and the short story except the basic IDEA. But Aldiss's estate was paid for the rights to use the story. Which I think touches on the crux of the issue: those with access (published or produced or agency-represented writers) are accorded more rights than a guy who flies in to LA from Missouri with a dream and gets to have a cup of coffee with a director. But in the eyes of the law, they are the same.
 
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Just like when that guy pitches to Deep Space Nine and has a concept with characters and story beats and a beginning, middle and end, he's ripped off when Deep Space Nine goes ahead and makes the episode without paying him.
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Sure, at that point I think it's getting far more obvious that someone simply took the story from someone else.

Incidentally, I'm sure I remember the guy who wrote 'Babylon 5' commenting on how DS9 itself appeared a while after he'd been pitching 'Babylon 5' around the TV industry.
 
Well, Dorothy Fontana noted the same thing, and - as it happened - had recently done some pitches for her own star-trek-on-a-space-station project with some people at Paramount.

Dorothy never spoke about details, but she did smile enigmatically when a friend noted that her nice new house in Big Bear had been suddenly paid off in full, not long after her gripe with Paramount had been settled behind closed doors...
 
I'd just like to recommend everyone not to confuse "stealing a script" with "getting inspired by a script". If someone really steals your script, sue him. Heck! And if you can't afford sueing him in the U.S. go to a European country and sue him there (that's actually something quite a lot of people do).

If someone gets inspired by your script - that might be bad luck, because possibly it makes it a bit more difficult to sell YOUR view of the story. On the other hand it could also mean you have BETTER chances to sell your script, because now someone else has proven that this kind of story works.

It is actually quiet easy: If the alleged thief has copied your script and stayed very close to your version: sue him! If he did not stay close, great, what's the fuzz, then go ahead and try to sell yours...
 
my question - is it really any different than any other industry? how many people work in the corporate world and have experienced someone taking their idea and profiting from it by claiming it as their own, or taking a product on the market and tweaking it a tad. this happens person to person, corporation to corporation, country to country.... NOT justifying it, but it is a part of it all.

It's part of the business and all you can do is take enough steps to protect yourself...the rest is uncontrollable. if you happen to send a script to a shady producer/agent that takes it and runs, well, that's what happened. Hopefully the legal system can help. But this fact can't stop you from sending that brilliant script out.

I had a friend in reality TV who wouldn't pitch anything unless he had footage (presentation) or a "celebrity/personality" he could pitch. Without one of those two, his idea is just an idea HE is unnecessary to the production company. This is especially true in reality pitches.
 
The complicated copyright law of proving 'Substantial Similarity' and the fact some people hearing a pitch can gauge how far they can go to escape liability. The danger exists also for those who option/purchase/acquire a script and the writer somehow lands the production company in litigation for various alleged breaches of copyright. The production company often requires indemnity from the writer, however, this is as valuable as the financial security the writer can provide or any insurance that may cover them (if such a policy exists for a writer and/or production company). Damn, my head is spinning again.
 
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