LA_producer
Junior Member
Hi. We're in California (USA), we've bought out the rights for a new feature screenplay with an exclusive story that has never ever been covered in the media before, and the story is a bomb.
There's one more party (producers) who wanted it, but did not buy the rights - not even tried to, they have just talked to the author, emailed back and forth but took no action to acquire the rights.
So my company has acquired the rights legally - via agreement, and we're the only and exclusive owners of the copyrights, with the agreement stating that we can also represent the author in any type of negotiations and possible conflict (if any).
Yesterday when we came to negotiations with a well-known writer about the project it had started with him being angry because he found an "official film site" where it's stated that THAT party is the project producers and legal rights owners. So the negotiations weren't nice.
These guys published the synopsis of this unique story with character names and storylines from this very script.
There is a video trailer made / edited by the screenwriter to portray the story - and these guys took the trailer, re-edited it to delete any mentioning of the original author/producers and put their names as WRITERS and PRODUCERS (!OMG, they're crazy).
Then these guys created and IMDB page of the film mentioning they are THE writers AND producers of the film.
Of course, those "producers" act with no documents, no legal right to do anything with the story etc. So this site is an intentional hoax for potential investors, because it contains clear statements of "all rights reserved" (when it's a lie), and the stolen story + promo materials for it.
We have not yet contacted this geniuses, because as I see it, it's a cool case for any lawyer to file them a complaint for a nice amount of money.
But we're quite new in the US and CA specifically and not sure how the copyright law is working here / applied.
Could you advise if this situation is worth spending time for complaints / demands / suing perspectives? I'm not sure, but isn't intentional erasing of the mentioning of the author/copyright holders for the sake of selling the story as your own a felony as well?
Also if the case is worth the time/efforts maybe there's some IP/copyrights lawyer who'd love to help the guys get a bit poorer?
There's one more party (producers) who wanted it, but did not buy the rights - not even tried to, they have just talked to the author, emailed back and forth but took no action to acquire the rights.
So my company has acquired the rights legally - via agreement, and we're the only and exclusive owners of the copyrights, with the agreement stating that we can also represent the author in any type of negotiations and possible conflict (if any).
Yesterday when we came to negotiations with a well-known writer about the project it had started with him being angry because he found an "official film site" where it's stated that THAT party is the project producers and legal rights owners. So the negotiations weren't nice.
These guys published the synopsis of this unique story with character names and storylines from this very script.
There is a video trailer made / edited by the screenwriter to portray the story - and these guys took the trailer, re-edited it to delete any mentioning of the original author/producers and put their names as WRITERS and PRODUCERS (!OMG, they're crazy).
Then these guys created and IMDB page of the film mentioning they are THE writers AND producers of the film.
Of course, those "producers" act with no documents, no legal right to do anything with the story etc. So this site is an intentional hoax for potential investors, because it contains clear statements of "all rights reserved" (when it's a lie), and the stolen story + promo materials for it.
We have not yet contacted this geniuses, because as I see it, it's a cool case for any lawyer to file them a complaint for a nice amount of money.
But we're quite new in the US and CA specifically and not sure how the copyright law is working here / applied.
Could you advise if this situation is worth spending time for complaints / demands / suing perspectives? I'm not sure, but isn't intentional erasing of the mentioning of the author/copyright holders for the sake of selling the story as your own a felony as well?
Also if the case is worth the time/efforts maybe there's some IP/copyrights lawyer who'd love to help the guys get a bit poorer?
