High School Teacher's Copyright Suit Against Netflix Gets Dismissed Because Coincidence Isn't Protectable

from the class-dismissed dept

Of all the areas that result in copyright lawsuits that never should have been filed, it surely must be ignorance of the idea/expression dichotomy that is the most common. That link will take you to a litany of posts about copyright fights in which one party sues another over elements of a creative work that are themselves not protectable. The basic explainer goes like this: the specific expression of a work, or even the specific expression of unique thematic or character elements, can be protected by copyright, whereas mere general ideas cannot. This is why Batman is a copyrightable character, but that copyright cannot be used to sue the hell out of anyone that writes a story about an insane rich person who wears a cape and cowl while fighting bad guys. Idea versus expression.

It's crazy just how many lawsuits get filed by full grown adult lawyers who don't seem to understand this. One recent example is a lawsuit brought by a high school English teacher against Netflix over the latter's series, Outer Banks. The suit was tossed at the motion to dismiss stage, with the court reasoning that the majority of the 40-plus claims of infringement amount to either non-protectable ideas, or allegations that amount to mere coincidence that has nothing to do with copying anything at all. On the first of those:

In a 25-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Timothy C. Batten Sr. said Kevin Wooten’s 2016 book “Pennywise: The Hunt for Blackbeard’s Treasure!” had a significantly different plot, characterization, mood, pace and settings than the Netflix original.

“To be sure, both works involve shipwrecks and treasure hunts,” Batten said. “But to analyze their plots at such a high level of abstraction would render every work involving a hunt for buried treasure susceptible to copyright infringement.”

It's a useful high-level takeaway on the majority of issues with the lawsuit, but it's worth noting that the court did in fact do a deep dive on each of the claims made. Not all of them amount to generic story ideas such as the above. While the actual plotlines and characters are very, very different -- a different number of main characters, different treasures being hunted for by those characters, different outcomes, etc. -- , some of the claims detailed out in the dismissal are downright absurd.

As a preliminary matter, many of Wooten’s purported similarities either do not exist or are “random similarities” that “could be found in very dissimilar works.” Beal, 20 F.3d at 460 (quoting Beal, 806 F. Supp. at 967 n.2). For instance, he argues that “both Works clearly sought to invoke an avian theme at the mausoleum.” [19] at 14. He points out that in his novel, Nathan and Ben find a clue hidden in the wing of a bird statue at a mausoleum. He argues that this plot device is substantially similar to the protagonists’ discovery in Outer Banks of a clue labeled “For Bird.” But the bird reference in Outer Banks is merely a callback to the nickname John B’s father gave him as a child. The fact that the word “bird” is present in both narratives is entirely innocuous and of no significance in an infringement analysis.

It goes on from there, including where the court looks at the actual main characters of each work, claimed by Wooten to be substantially similar, and concludes:

In sum, the characterization in the novel is in stark contrast to that of the series. The Outer Banks characters are complex, with narratives that cause the viewer to at times sympathize with even the most nefarious individuals. In the novel, on the other hand, the naïve Pennywise twins and their uncle serve as prototypical hero figures while Darwin acts as a classic villain.

Without trying to, the motion to dismiss doubles as something of a literary review, albeit one rather unkind to Wooten's novel.

The real point of all of this is that what should be common sense ought also to be better understood among attorneys willing to file copyright lawsuits on behalf of clients: you cannot copyright general ideas, tropes, nor the obvious story elements that grow from either. Treasure hunts are as tropish as they come, frankly, and attempting to silence an entirely unrelated creative work simply because of "avian themes" and the like is nonsensical.

Filed Under: copyright, idea expression dichotomy, kevin wooten, outer banks
Companies: netflix