ASK & DISCUSS INDEX

12 years, 7 months ago - Diarmuid Keane

For your information I got this from the Copyright website - http://www.eucopyright.com/en

What is Intellectual Property?

Intellectual property, often known as IP, refers to creations of the mind: inventions (patents), literary and artistic works, symbols, names, images, designs used in commerce. The owner of intellectual property can control and be rewarded for its use, and this encourages further innovation and creativity to the benefit of us all.

I am assuming based on this statement that what ever your idea is, you must have it written down and registered for copyright, but as you said all it takes is a slight modification to the original to make that null and void.

12 years, 7 months ago - Gerry Byron

1) You can't.
2) Don't.
3) You hjave to try everything.

12 years, 7 months ago - Tony Oldham

If you are 100% positive your idea is a break through format, unless you are established, your best bet would be to make it as a pilot if you want to ensure no one else runs with the idea. A good format is worth a fortune, but there are few original ideas that have not already been thought up somewhere somehow. You can protect anyone from accusations of copying an idea by registering a written format/ proposal with the US writers guild registration service for just $20, but this does not protect the idea from being copied. I would recommend a really good website called TVMole.com which is ran by a former development exec. and gives lots of great advice and useful links. In terms of developing and making a pilot, if you can't do it yourself, you may be able to approach a third party established production company to work with you; that's generally the advice that would be provided. If you are wanting to produce it yourself, you can make a pilot for a really low amount of money. We made our pilot for under £500 on broadcast HD and got it broadcast overseas which proved a good start for us. Best of luck with your project. Tony

12 years, 6 months ago - Vasco de Sousa

There are patents, copyright, design and trademarks. Depending on why you mean by "concept", it may or may not be protectable by copyright. Many tv shows seem to share similar concepts with each other, and read the release contract before you pitch to understand your rights and the network's point of view.

Even if you're in the UK, the best place to protect your work is the US Library of Congress. I've registered several screenplays with them. Then, you might want to register it with one of the American Writers Guilds. I've registered many works with the WGA East (but it only lasts ten years, while the L.O.C. lasts as long as America.)

There are other places you can register your script, but I wouldn't recommend them due to lack of corporate stability.

12 years, 7 months ago - Marlom Tander

1) Copyright protects actual works, so a concept for a work can't (usually) protect the unmade work. For example, hard as it might be to believe, someone, somewhere invented the following concepts for TV series:-

The Animal Docu
The Double Act Police Procedural
The Hospital Drama

Do you think they collect money from every new series based on those concepts?

I myself wrote some javascript code that got stolen. I got a settlement, because they had simply cut/pasted my code in it's entirenty, licence notice and all!, but when another company wrote DIFFERENT CODE to produce the same result, they were not infringing.

The only way a concept might protect your interest in a completed work is if the concept is very detailed, and the completed work is a slavish following. But, as you note, it won't be.

AFIK this case shows just how hard it is for a prior work to prevent similar works. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticipation_%28advertisement%29