Re: FN-FORUM accusations of plagarism

date posted 20th January 2003 21:57

Hi David,

First of all, I Am Not A Lawyer...:-)

However, I am involve din film production and we have a saying - Where
there's a hit, there's a write. basically, a lot of the major players in
entertainment media will not accept unsolicited materials from you unless
you sign a waiver that effectively says' Even if we produce a game
/film/record that is VERY similar to your idea, you won't sue us.'. The
reason for this is to avoid teh sort of issues that you're hitting now.

First of all, you can't copyright an idea and unless any sort of
non-disclosure agreements were signed it MIGHT be possible to argue that
showing you something put the idea in to the public domain - dodgy but I've
seen it attempted. What is copyrightable is the manifestation of an idea.
Characters graphics, music, even to soem degree actual keys and mouse
movements used to control the game.

First of all, you need to prove for yourself that your code has been around
for as long as you say it has. If you've got proof of this, get the proof
safely stashed away. If you wrote teh code and then showed it around, you
MIGHT get away with signed statements from the people you showed it to that
'on or before the date in question, you had the code'.

You would, I believe, have to prove you DIDN'T see any of their code - this
is difficult but I think that that is the way around it goes.

Taking something like this to court is a bitch, and an expensive job. Don't
go there. Marshall the facts and then talk to them. Is there room in the
market place for you both?

This sort of thing happens a lot in film / story writing and often is
coincidence. The usual advice to writers caught like this is tough, go
write something else...:-(

Hope it pans out and that you get some more legal advice...:-)

Joe


----- Original Message -----
From: "David Eckersall" [EMAIL REMOVED]
To: [EMAIL REMOVED]
Sent: Monday, January 20, 2003 8:55 PM
Subject: FN-FORUM accusations of plagarism


just wondering if anyones got any idea of what i can do about this?

at a company i worked for last year we were approached by a company about
hosting and marketing an sms game they had devised. after quite a long while
of excuses from them i finally built one myself.

now i've just recieved an email where this company have actually finished
off their game and after seeing my code accused me of plagarism - odd since
mines been ready to go for the last 4 or 5 months whilst theirs has only
just been finished by the sounds of it and during building the sms games
script i never once saw a line of their code.

just wondering what legal recourse i might have? i've no plan to actually to
take them to court but i'd like to the frighteners on them to shut the
tossers up.

tia


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