Copyrights For Screenwriting
- Screenwriting is the art of writing scripts conceived and crafted for visual medium performance. Pursuant to copyright law, screenwriters' scripts are comprised by the "Performing Arts" works category, legally distinguished for their intent to be "performed," and specifically as "indirectly" for audiences "by means of any device or process," according to RegisteringATrademark.com. Notably in business practice, this very nature of the screenwriting discipline implicates distinct authorial complications, manifested demonstrably in today's digital age industrial networking context. In particular, for aspiring screenwriters, a script's marketable performance prospects effectively hinge on vast and continual entertainment industry exposure; yet at once, market contact submission presents a very real plagiarism risk --- whether by purposed recipients (agents, solicitors, peers), or by anyone to whom the script's digital dissemination has made it accessible. This circumstance has fostered legitimate paranoia amongst the screenwriting collective, resulting in degrees of self-censorship antithetical to the creative process. Screenplay copyright is, therefore, critical; its protection privileges the author to avail his best work to the optimal opportunities to realize his authorial performance intent.
- The scope of copyright protection for screenplays is limited to original script expression intended for on-screen performance.Creatas/Creatas/Getty Images
Akin to all copyrightable works, screenplay copyrights are subject to eligibility preconditions as well as qualifying restraints on the protection scope afforded. As an initial matter, the literal script must be "fixed in a tangible form of expression," meaning simply its commission to a physical writing, according to RegisteringATrademark.com. Chiefly pertinent, its content must satisfy copyright's originality principle; its creation must be the screenwriter's independently, displaying sufficient elements of individual authorship, often through character development, dialogue and imagery. Correspondingly, copyright's scope categorically excludes those elements that are mere generalized concepts or ideas --- a plot's love triangle, for example, or a protagonist vampire. Rather, copyright extends only to the recognizable ways in which the screenwriter specifically expresses the given concepts and ideas, namely by fleshing them out in unique context, contrast and detail. - Technically, qualifying original screenplays --- like all creative works --- are deemed copyrighted simply upon creation; formal registration is not a prerequisite. Nevertheless, authors are strongly advised to register their works with the U.S. Copyright Office to obtain statutory recognition and corresponding benefits. As applied to screenwriting, the comprehensive advantages conferred --- all incident to standardized procedure minimal in effort and cost --- can be of formative practical consequence, including the right to sue for infringement in instances of plagiarism and other unauthorized use; public record notice of the right to restrict and penalize unauthorized use; and protection extending for life plus 70 years. Cumulatively, these benefits function to secure, to the greatest extent feasible, the screenwriter's exclusive legal control and authorial prerogative to direct, exploit or otherwise leverage his registered script through all its life-cycle stages --- from the original writing to derivative performances.
- The Writer's Guild of America offers additional screenwriting protection means through its online script registry. The majority of screenwriters capitalize on this resource. Any material, however raw or conceptual, can be registered; the procedure is simple and cheap, and the status obtained is globally reputable. However, while operating independently of copyright and serving like objectives of ownership documentation and plagiarism prevention, WGA registration is affirmatively not an alternative to or substitute for copyright. To the contrary, it should be considered and employed merely as a useful supplement, with copyright registration the primary protection source and framework. The WGA registry's principal benefits --- as supplementary to registered copyright --- include providing dated records of authorship claims to particular materials, as corroborating evidence in contested cases; and providing intermediary protective coverage for story ideas and treatment concepts, as entirely unprotectable otherwise due to copyright ineligibility.
