Who can deny the incredible popularity of the Twilight series, by Stephanie Meyer! Her books lit the imagination of millions of people, spawned five feature films and for a minute, it seems like everyone had separated into Team Edward or Team Jacob.
People couldn’t get enough of vampires, werewolves and ordinary girls, and that meant fan fiction writers had a field day, writing the Twilight world into new and exciting stories, with readers voraciously reading every word. So is fan fiction copyright infringement?
You bet it is, but online fanfic operates in a space that is often tolerated by the original creators, with lawsuits for copyright infringement being rare. On the off chance that a fanfic begins to take on a life of its own, you can be sure that both publishers and lawyers are watching very closely.
As authors, we get inspiration from all around us, and we develop our own voices by reading works by others and practicing our own writing. Sometimes we need somewhere to start, and fan fiction can be that place. But there is a danger to using someone else’s work as a framework for your own, since using identifiable and distinguishable elements from an existing story is substantial enough to be considered copyright infringement.
One of the fan faction writers creating work set in the Twilight universe was E.L. James, an author who had unpublished manuscripts already on file at home. In writing Twilight fan fiction, she exploded in popularity, but her stories were quickly banned from the fan fiction website due to their racy content. Sensing an opportunity, and, to cut a long story short, E.L. James took her work offline, changed the names of characters and places, turned the vampire into a playboy billionaire, and published 50 Shades of Grey.
Although the origin of 50 Shades is a well known, undisputed, and blatant infringement on Stephanie Myers' copyright ownership, Myers has declined to bring legal action against E.L. James, although she could win. Her reasoning is that the genres of both books are vastly different, and the impact of 50 Shades sales is unlikely to have affected significantly the financial potential of Twilight.
From a copyright perspective, in changing everything that was associated with the Twilight universe, E.L. James’ work is substantially different, and it could be argued that it stands on its own, as a unique and original work. At the end of the day, bringing a lawsuit would probably be more trouble than it’s worth for both authors, but be warned, fanfic writers - keep it to the fanfic forum, and keep one eye on the sky..
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Written by Karen Workman, Kaiwhakahaere Whakapa | Creative Rights Educator