'Twilight' author Stephenie Meyer accused of plagiarism
"Twilight" author Stephenie Meyer is known for writing about bloodsuckers, but did she drain parts of her story from someone else?
Meyer has been accused of stealing from author Jordan Scott's 2006 novel "The Nocturne" for "Twilight: Breaking Dawn," the fourth book in the series, according to TMZ. Judging by the examples provided in the complaint, though, the claims probably will evaporate under sunlight.
See pictures from 'The Twilight Saga: New Moon.'
The document provided by TMZ, a letter from Scott's lawyers to the Hachette Book Group, contains 14 pages of supposed similarities, ranging from events in the wedding to sex scenes to dream sequences.
While that sounds bad for Meyer, many of the similarities are shared by decades' worth of romantic novels.
One example: Meyer's pregnancy scene reads, "Most of her dark hair was pulled away from her face in a messy knot, but a few strands stuck limply to her forehead and neck, to the sheen of sweat that covered her skin. There was something about her fingers and wrists that looked so fragile it was scary. She was sick. Very sick."
Fairly standard imagery for a horror-story pregnancy, no?
Scott's version reads: "Her face was so pale it was frightening; and there were beads of sweat pouring down her forehead. She couldn't even stand, she was so weak. The sight of her this way terrified me, but for some reason I could not bring myself to look away. She was violently ill, vomiting and scarcely able to catch her breath."
In the absence of direct phrase stealing, both examples are so boilerplate it's difficult to see either as plagiarism.
Read more in a PDF of the complaint, courtesy of TMZ.
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Im no twilight fan but come on that is not plagiarism its a typical romance scene
Honestly, as I remember in school, plagiarism is direct lifting. Having similar ideas doesn't count. From the p***age above, there are not a lot of different ways an ill pregnant woman can look. All books in a genre have similar ideas. That is what makes them part of the genre. The big question is: why now? The Twilight book has been out for about a year. Publicity anyone?
if that's the best example they got, then the claim is not gonna hold water. bastards.
I think it's bs; but Breaking Dawn IS the worst in the series, and does read differently from the other 3 books. More on the theory here: http://www.celebsession.com/2009/08/twilight-series-author-accused-of.html
You can plagiarize someone's ideas without directly copying their words but I don't think that's what happened here. Wishful thinking on Scott's part.
No you cannot plagiarize ideas. Plagiarism is direct word-for-word copying. At least it is in a legal 'copyright-infringement' sense. Without word-for-word copying, it likely isn't infringement; you CANNOT copyright an idea - you copyright a specific expression of an idea. I'm no lawyer, but I've read enough on the subject to feel confident that the example given in the article is ridiculous.
Yes, I know the courts have some weird rules on how they determine whether 'non-literal copying' is infringement, but I'm pretty sure it involves a lot more than a few vaguely and generically similar p***ages. With non-literal copying you have a much harder row to hoe, I think, because story plots are NOT patentable, and patents are the only thing that grants a limited monopoly over an idea itself (not just a specific expression thereof). And even if a patent were at issue, they could argue both prior art and obviousness, I'm sure. But fortunately this is a copyright issue not a patent issue anyway.
dc,you are abosultley correct!
Vampire novels should be immune from charges of plagiarism, since there's been so many of them that a little lifting from previous novels in the genre is inevitable. Hell, romance writers have been stealing from each other for decades, and nobody's going to court over that.
I guess my question is: who the hell is Jordan Scott?
methinks someone is jealous of her booksales and wants some people to buy his book too.
Gaack! Sounds like every romance novel ever written to me. Not an original idea in either one but there must be 100's of books with variations on the theme.