plagiarism?

Question

say if your writng a book involving the characters from another authors book who no longer writes the book and has move on to a new book, you use her charachters plus additional chararcters, using their super powers, and some of their super names but changing their whom names. and not using the same titlebecause of the story line difference is this legal
is this legal if the author is not using the other authors story line

Answer 1

it's only legal if it's fanfiction, which you don't publish. But even that, some authors don't want you to write fanfiction off their works.

Answer 2

This isn't plagiarism unless you are actually copying (or only slightly rewriting) the original author's words. It is, however, almost certainly copyright violation.

It doesn't matter if the original author is still writing about those characters or not. The original author's work is still under copyright (and will continue to be under copyright long after she is dead), and the characters and names may also be trademarked.

Copyright law can be complicated and I am not a lawyer, but what you're describing sounds like a clear copyright violation to me. I don't think any publisher would ever accept a book like this unless you had permission from the original author or current copyright holder.

Answer 3

Hi there,
I think you will find that you have a problem with copyright without obtaining rights from the original author. One such arrangement that comes to mind immediately is Robert Ludlum and Eric Lustbader. Pretty sure Eric is the writer who took over Ludlum's characters. However, he did it with Ludlum's cooperation and I'm sure there is a contractual obligation to pay Ludlum $. I would suggest that you contact a copyright lawyer in your area. If you can't afford to do that then you might want to contact a local law school and present it as a problem to one of the students....they are ALWAYS eager to have a real life problem to research as opposed to all the hypotheticals that their profs provide! :)

Good luck

barbara

p.s. An interesting book to read is "Wide Sargass Sea" by Jean Rhys. She wrote a prequel to a novel of Jane Austen's that is fantastic.

Answer 4

Um, no. It is stealing their intellectual property, and I'd sue you until I was blue in the face. If the author is still alive the work is still copyrighted. Write it all you want, change what you want but it will never get published if there are too many similarities to the author you are copying.

Answer 5

That is most definitely not legal. But if you really want to write it, try going on fanfiction websites and publish it there! Lots of people write stories with author's characters on those websites (that's the point), and as long as you put a disclaimer, it's fine!

Answer 6

You cannot use characters from another person's work. It's called fan fiction, and it is a violation of copyright law. If you write a story about Harry Potter and just change his name to Jerry Carter but it is a otherwise the identical person, it is copyright violation. Please go to copyright.gov and understand what is and is not protected by copyright law.

Answer 7

I'll just go with what others have said here in regards to your book.

However, I will add that if you're lacking the creative ability to create and develop your own characters you're not a writer. You're a hack without talent. Real writers don't rip off of other writers. They develop their own style and ideas.

Answer 8

it was hard to tell by your grammatical HAPPYSLAP of English
whether or not this person book is published
if so, then it's more or less legal to plagiarise a character as long as you aren't brazen
if not, then it isn't copywrited so go right ahead.
but i would advise, judging by your question, that you take up needlework instead of writing.

Answer 9

quit trying to continue the harry potter books anyone who read this question knows that is what you are trying to do.