If the only things the movie and Dan Ackerman’s book have in common are the historical facts, then I don’t understand how Ackerman’s book is being infringed on. Is there more to it than that? I haven’t read Ackerman’s book and I’ve not seen the Apple movie. Are there fictional elements or speculations in Ackerman’s book that were translated to the Apple movie?
That may be true, but I think he might have a case…
The lawsuit said that Ackerman sent a pre-publication copy of the book to the Tetris Company earlier that year. He said the company refused to license its intellectual property for projects related to his book, dissuading producers who were interested in adapting it, and sent him a “strongly worded cease and desist letter.”
So he made the book, presented it to Tetris, they rejected the idea, threatened him to sue if he did his own thing, rejected other producers, then I guess partnered with Apple and made it as if it was their idea.
Are there fictional elements or speculations in Ackerman’s book that were translated to the Apple movie?
I think so, I think it’s more a thematic kind of thing, not the history per se. But I haven’t watched the movie or read the book, so this is just my point if view from what the article says.
No idea if it works like that or if he would have a case as I’m not a lawyer, or writer, or producer, so take what I said with a pinch of salt.
IANAL, so I don’t know what are the actual legal merits involved in either having a case or not… but if someone came to me about some facts about me that they published, and they wanted me to ‘buy the rights’ to those historic facts about me, I’d feel totally justified in telling them to piss off. And if I later decided to create any form of written or video story about myself, the peddler who’d come to me earlier would already be on my blacklist of potential partners to work with.
it’s history. it happened. Ackerman didn’t invent the story, unless he’s claiming that’s the case…?
If I write a book about The Prohibition, is Ken Burns going to sue me because he once made a docu-series about it?
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
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.
Gizmodo? The publication that got uninvited to all Apple events due to their coverage on the leaked iPhone 4? I’m certain there are new owners of Gizmodo since then, but the irony here is pretty interesting…
due to their coverage on the leaked iPhone 4?
They literally committed a felony, bought what at that point was a stolen prototype, damaged Apple’s property, and then tried to extort Apple in exchange for returning what was, again, Apple’s own property.
Apple and ripping shit off. Old news
