Can Copyright Protect Your IDEA?

Copyright protects the original expression of ideas but copyright does NOT protect ideas.

A hot debate emerged recently over protecting the IDEA of a‘Tiny Hat’ comedy skit with copyright. After Saturday Night Live produced a ‘Tiny Hat’ comedy skit, another comedy group (who had already produced a successful comedy skit about wearing ‘tiny hats’)… claimed that Saturday Night Live stole the ‘tiny hat comedy skit’ idea from them and thereby violated their copyright. 

Unfortunately for the comedy duo, copyright law doesn’t grant them the exclusive right to the ‘universe of all comedy skits about tiny hats’… just because they were the first produce a popular skit on the topic. Copyright law does, however, protect the dialogue, the video made of the comedy duo’s skit and other original ways that their idea was expressed in their skit.  And if the dialogue, video or other ‘original expression’ components of the skit were being copied, imitated, plagiarized, distributed or sampled without permission then copyright law can come to the rescue and battle the alleged infringer.

The IDEA to write a skit about Tiny Hats isn’t protected by copyright law. (For example there are a lot of plays written about Star Crossed Lovers: Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story… etc)

(…both skits are pretty darn funny.  Google ‘Battle of the Tiny Hat’ to take a look!!)

By Vanessa Kaster

http://iplegalfreebies.wordpress.com/