Dan Ackerman, editor in chief of the tech-news website Gizmodo, filed a lawsuit in Manhattan federal court on Monday accusing Apple , the Tetris Company and others of adapting his book about the landmark video game "Tetris" into a feature film without his permission.
  • vmaziman@lemm.eeEnglish
    01·
    1 year ago

    No but if you wrote a musical about prohibition, submitted it to apple, but apple rejects it, discourages other producers from picking it up and then apple made a musical about the prohibition, you may have a case. I think the issue is the thematic stylistic interpretation was copied over either intentionally or unintentionally, and the court needs to decide if it’s worth a suit

    • FaceDeer@kbin.social
      1·
      1 year ago

      Style isn’t copyrightable, there has to be more substantive commonalities than just that.

      It’ll be up to the courts to decide if there is, of course. I notice that a review of the book quoted Ackerman from it:

      In cases where the historical record is unclear, or when my interviews conflicted with previously published accounts, I’ve attempted to recount the most likely version of what happened, based on research and my own conversations with many of the primary participants. A certain amount of historical interpolation was required to offer a clear narrative understanding, including into the thought processes and motivations of those involved.

      Which suggests that the book is partly fictionalized, so it’s possible that there may be identifiable elements lifted from it. We’ll see.