I am interested in a short story that was published in the 50s. The author signed it with pseudonym. He is nowhere to be found.
That story was translated and published in 1990. I asked for the rights to adapt the story, the publisher said that they do not own the rights and the original author is unknown.
I have done my best (which is not much) to trace that author, to no avail.
The original story is about 4 pages (print), my screenplay is close to 120 pages (screenplay).
Can I copyright my screenplay? Can I claim sole authorship? Would that story be considered public domain?
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No it's not public domain. Any production company etc will be very keen to have you demonstrate chain of title - this reduces the risk of lawsuits. If it were to go into production the author or their heirs could come out of the woodwork and sue - most producers would consider this an unacceptable risk. I believe insurance companies and funders would also be put off, but don't quite me on that.
If you genuinely can't find the author, can you assess how closely you used the idea? Maybe you aren't breaching their copyright as you have done a lot of work to change it up?
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Thank you, Simon. You're right, of course.
I kept the core idea (example: 3 people die and go to Heaven where they try to build a spacecraft to return to Earth), plus a detail here a detail there (like a character’s profession, and such). Everything else is mine. If ‘assessing’ means ‘what percentage of originality I brought in’, I’d say close to 80%—if not more. But that kind of ‘core idea’ is recognizable, is it not? It’s not like ‘Boy meets girl…’. That’s too vague.
That being said, I’d rather have the rights from the original author. But he is nowhere to be found.
Lastly, when the publisher republished that story in 1990, they admittedly didn’t have the rights.. They found the story in a (1959) defunct magazine, tracked the author, didn’t find him, and published it singing ‘hallelujah’.
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Yeah, they were happy to take that risk I guess. In all likelihood there is no real risk, but you still don't have chain of title if you claim it is an adaptation.
However, concepts and ideas cannot be copyrighted. Terminator is not the first film to be made about a killer from the future sent to assassinate someone in the past.
I think you should just be sure there is nothing on the nose about your script that was taken too closely from the story and call it an inspiration rather than an adaptation. Problem solved.
Fun concept though, I see why you liked it. Did you give a it a lighthearted tone?
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Jeff. Thank you for the advice. I love this community, everybody's so willing to help. Be proud of it.
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Marc Serhan Hi Marc, public domain is something like 70+ years after it was written. Different countries var, I think. No, you can't claim sole authorship, as it is based on existing IP.
I'm surprised that the publishers contract didn't state the author's real name and just the pseudonym. That seems very strange to me.