[NEohioPAL]note to screenwriters

[Christopher]

Hi Brandi,

I didn't mean for the timing to directly connect people to your
information.  I figured it was better to get that out sooner than later
with the increased interest in local screenwriting, brought on in
significant part by your posted interest in teaching the subject.

I used to mail stuff to myself all the time, and as I produce my own
work, I felt that I was protected copyright protects you once the work
is rendered to tangible media.  I was working on a feature film of short
stories, hadn't written all the stories yet, and thought I needed the
complete body of work before I could file for copyright articles.  I had
to show two of the shorts to potential investors to get funding for the
rest of the project.  You can fill in an ending from there.  I wasn't
even accused of the fraudulent method I described, it was simply
determined in a Pennsylvania court (where entertainment issues arise far
more often than in Ohio courts) that my having sent the screenplays to
myself COUPLED WITH  my having produced the short films two years before
the feature length versions of my short films were getting shopped out
was insufficient evidence for my claim.  I tried to figure out how I
could have cheated the system the way they claim was possible (since
neither the defendant or the court felt obliged to telling how to cheat
the system if I hadn't), and came up with the scenario I wrote about. 
My father is not an
entertainment attorney, but has his PhD in law from Brown University,
and was able to cite multiple possibilities of patent law infringement,
which has many parallels to copyright law.  The sending to yourself
technique is probably adequate for custodial issues with screenplays
contributed to by more than one author, where the origin of the idea
isn't in question, but rather who deserves primary authorship benefits
like credit placement (i.e. who wrote what, when).  But when origin is
concerned, take it from someone who watched their ideas get turned into
career builders for other people, it's best to have proof lock solid
from the outset.

An option for people with multiple ideas is to submit them as a
collective work, much the way all of Shakespeare's comedies or tragedies
or poems are often compiled into one volume.  It doesn't protect works
as individual titles, but one cannot copyright a title in the first
place, it's protecting the idea
within that counts.  If you think these ideas are appropriate for your
students, feel free to disseminate them accordingly.

All the best,
Christopher K. Young


"Brandi L." wrote:

> One of my students is an attorney and says sending it to yourself does
> protect the work, at least to some degree it does.  Since not everyone can
> pay the filing fee to protect every work in progress mailing works to
> oneself has been a standard actually.  ??
>
> However all things you mentioned also work and are very useful to know!  If
> you'd like I can get some more detailed information from my student that is
> an entertainment lawyer and used to be a criminal defense attorney to
> satisfy the issues you have raised to all based off an email I sent out.
> Let me know.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Brandi Lynn Borgia