By now many of you will have heard of this story. Here is a brief summary: 17 year old (Kaavya Viswanathan) gets big contract from a top tier publisher to publish her critically acclaimed book. Problems arose when some people noticed striking similarities between passages in Kaavya's novel and one that was published years earlier by Megan F. McCafferty. In fact, one could say that passages were lifted almost word for word.
So now the publisher's are angry, and denials are flying. None of this is particularly exciting to me except for the fact that there are some interesting legal issues. The first is whether Kaavya is (or may be) guilty of copyright infringement. Or is this a matter of plagiarism?
Section 3(1) of the Copyright Act of Canada states, in part, "For the purposes of this Act, “copyright”, in relation to a work, means the sole right to produce or reproduce the work or any substantial part thereof in any material form whatever..." Obviously this issue is a matter of USA law but the substance is similar. It is doubtful in this case that Kaavya's activities (if proven) amount to copyright infringement but, as noted in the article I link to, she probably is in hot water with her publisher in terms of breach of contract. No doubt there is some term in there somewhere where she says, among other things, that she is the author of the book, that is it original etc etc.
The moral of the story is this (in my opinion) - read the contracts that you sign carefully. Understand the words and the meaning before you sign on the dotted line. On the flip side, make sure the contracts you ask others to sign are carefully worded to protect your interests as fully as is possible. It can work to your advantage is things go wrong at some point in the future.
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