Copyright generally doesn't cover broad plot structure or tropes, especially components that are considered characteristic of a genre (scènes à faire). Where it gets tricky is deciding when a particular arrangement of plot points and tropes is close enough to be infringing. The lines between rip-off, homage, parody, subversion, and (sub)genre (re)invention aren't especially bright or sharp. As with many other things, how much you can get away with seems to heavily depend on industry influence/standing. I don't think too many people other than Mel Brooks could have made Spaceballs happen, for example.
Nah, that's far too limited and specific. Patents have been extended in scope somehow to cover things like "business models" and algorithms, far more abstract things. Copyright keeps being held to specific sequences of tokens and much more concrete things.
The problem there is that it's incredibily difficult to prove copyright violation / plagiarism; a recent example, there's a Tetris film on Apple TV and the author of a book is suing because they believe it lifted their story after he sent a pre-production copy to the company currently owning the Tetris brand: https://www.theguardian.com/games/2023/aug/09/the-tetris-eff...
0xcde4c3db|2 years ago
thaumasiotes|2 years ago
Copyright doesn't cover specific plot structure either. Compare The Sword of Shannara to The Fellowship of the Ring.
You can make a page-for-page copy of a book with the names changed and you're fine as far as copyright goes.
h2odragon|2 years ago
Cthulhu_|2 years ago
izacus|2 years ago