The Cost of Protecting Yourself and Your Ideas

These days it's harder and trickier to get your original content out there. No matter who you are someone is always looking to take advantage or exploit you and your material. From web videos to movies someone out there might have already thought of some aspect of your idea and feels they are entitled to something for that.

For me this can be tough because I know that I love running my ideas by people to gauge their reactions. This can make things tough because if they offer one piece of advice and I use it in someway they have a claim to my idea. Take Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman who recently settled a lawsuit with a former collaborator. Michael "Tony" Moore states that he grew up with Kirkman and worked on The Walking Dead and other projects. Moore goes on to state that he was "duped" by Kirkman and his agent to sign control of The Walking Dead over to Kirkman. The deal would grant Moore 60 percent of "comic publishing net proceeds," 20 percent of "motion picture net proceeds" and future finical interest other projects.

Even though both parties allegedly had a deal this is a prime example of how people can become greedy and risk the future of your work. This is why you need to make sure everything you agree to is in writing, especially when it comes to someone either offering their input or running an idea across. Or just make sure you don't talk about it over email, text or aim so there’s no written record of it (kidding).

Another problem these days is the Internet. In recent years more people have taken to the Internet to either post their short stories for feedback or as a means of just getting their material out there. They hope that someone somewhere will see it and that will lead them to a manager or publishing deal. By doing so they are making their material readily available for someone to pick it apart and use it for their own idea.

The recent Santa Pawslawsuit against Disney is an example of how you need to protect your material and be careful whom you give it to.  Ray Harter, Richard Kearney and Ed Corno are suing Disney because they feel that the movies Santa Buddies: The Legend of Santa Paws and The Search for Santa Paws are unauthorized copies of their short story and script, Santa Paws: The Story of Santa's Dog. The plaintiffs claimed they conceived of their Santa Paws in 1991. They also filed suit against former William Morris agents John Ferriterand Barry Jeffery allegedly shopped the project around to studios. U.S. district court judge Catherine Perry made judgment in favor of Disney, ruling that the short story Santa Paws is not substantially similar to Disney's Santa Paws.

The Santa Paws case kind of leads into my next point and that is about remaking content that has already been made. One of the things on my list that I want to accomplish is that I want to be able to create a true Resident Evil movie and not the films Paul W.S. Anderson has made. However, in order to do this I would either have to write my script on my own and then hope that Capcom and Sony Pictures like it or go about the way Mortal Kombat: Legacy was created and write and shot a short video and hope it get’s Capcom and Sony’s attention.

Of course, if I go about the Mortal Kombat: Legacy way then I have to worry about Capcom and Sony suing me for infringing on their copyrighted material. These days with more and more remakes and reimagining’s being made it can be hard to know who truly owns the rights to the project and everything associated with it. Kings Road Entertainment is currently suing their former head of production SvenEbeling over the rights to All of Me. Seems like Ebeling and West Coast Productions were working on a remake of All of Me with Dreamworks, but things fell through. Ebeling was fired, but not before he alleged gave the rights of All of Me to WCP.

So should I try to get my idea for a Resident Evil movie made, I will need to make sure I go about it the right way or I will be owing Capcom and Sony quite a bit of money.

Just by reading this it seems like the entertainment business isn’t as fun and glamorous as most people think. It is a business were you need to protect yourself and everything you create because the second someone else gets a hold of your idea it’s gone. Then you’ll be sitting there watching other people succeed on that one thing that could have launched your career. That is why research is so important to everything you do and also trusting the right people to handle your work because if they slip out you are out of an idea.