Could I write a &quot;Parry Hotter&quot; novel? There is a question over at the Writing SE which was wondering whether J. K. Rowling would consent to somebody writing a Harry Potter sequel. The answer was, predictably in hindsight, &quot;you would never be able to give her a letter, and even if, she wouldn't read it, and even if, she'd say no.&quot; As a second best solution, could I — without her permission — write a novel that is pretty transparently set in the Harry Potter universe but simply changes a few letters around in the characters' names, so we have Parry Hotter, Waldo Bumblefloor, Salome Ginger etc.? The backstories are all the same, the rooms in the Hoglard school are the same, there are funny chasing games on brooms in the courtyard, even the pictures on the wall move. For clarification, it would not be a satire but a serious book (well, as serious as any of JKR) that I try to earn money with. The story would be original though, just set essentially in the &quot;same&quot; universe. Are there established criteria how far removed from original content a novel must be from an author who has no contract with or permission from the original author? Perhaps one can draw a parallel to an &quot;exposé novel&quot; (one disclosing private details about living persons). In such a novel, things for which one would fear libel or slander charges if they were claimed about real persons are attributed to fictional characters who are transparent stand-ins for the real persons. Apparently authors get away with that. Similarly, we are by no means writing about the well-known character created by JKR, Harry Potter. No, no, no. We talk about Parry Hotter, certainly not the only wizard out there. &quot;Mr Hilter.&quot; All similarities to invented characters are coincidental. I'm both interested in an answer concerning the U.S. as be biggest market and probably largest readership and potential authorship both of Law SE and Harry Potter, and the UK as the home country of JKR.
Using the setting and characters of an existing and current book would probably, indeed almost surely, make it a derivative work. Creating a derivative work from a work protected by copyright requires permission from the copyright holder, unless an exception to copyright applies. In US law 17 USC 101 defines a derivative work as: A “derivative work” is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications, which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a “derivative work”. and 17 USC 106 provides in pertinent part that: Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following: ... to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work; This means that creating such a fanfic without permission would be copyright infringement, and Rowling could sue for damages. Fair use In the US the primary exception to copyright available is fair use. Whether a work is a fair use of another is always a case-by-case decision, and often a complex one. There have not been many published US cases on whether fanfiction is or may be fair use. This depends on the details, but from the description I do not think such a fanfic as the question describes would be likely to be held to be a case of fair use. See Is this copyright infringement? Is it fair use? What if I don&#39;t make any money off it? In general fanfiction has not fared very well under US copyright law. See this Wikipedia article. A recent Law Review article on this topic, one of the few available, is The Better Angels of Our Fanfiction: The Need for True and Logical Precedent, 33 Hastings Comm. &amp; Ent. L.J. 159](https://repository.uchastings.edu/hastings_comm_ent_law_journal/vol33/iss2/1) by Stacey M. Lantagne. [Footnotes in the original shown here in {braces}.] On pages 168-9 Lantagne wrote: Although fanfiction is a flourishing medium, there has been no true case evaluating it under a fair use analysis. For instance, Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. v. RDR Books 575 F.Supp.2d 513 (SDNY 2008) involved a work created by a fan, but the work in question was an encyclopedic reference book about the original copyrighted material, not a piece of fiction spun off from the original copyrighted work in some way. The fan work's inconsistently transformative character swayed the court's fair use analysis{The court noted that at times the fan work lapsed into mere verbatim copying of the original copyrighted material, which detracted from its transformative nature}, and the fact that it used more of the original copyrighted work than was necessary.{The court found it telling that the fan work contained a great deal of verbatim copying of &quot;highly aesthetic expression,&quot; which tipped this factor away from a finding of fair use} These two factors would necessarily dictate a different analysis when a work of fiction is involved as opposed to a reference work.{Warner Bros., 575 F. Supp. 2d at 544. The court found troubling the excessive copying of &quot;distinctive original language from the Harry Potter works,&quot; using &quot;Rowling's original expression,&quot; in the work's entries. Id. Presumably, much less direct copying of original language would happen in a work of fiction. A similar implication occurs when considering the &quot;verbatim copying&quot; of whole sentences from the Harry Potter books. Id. at 547. Works of fanfiction seldom copy verbatim language, focusing on characters, settings, and plots.} Lantagne next discussed mthe case of Salinger v. Colting, 607 F.3d 68, 70. That case dealt with a novel called 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, whose protagonist, &quot;Mr. C&quot;, is a 76-year-old Holden Caulfield, (the protagonist of the J.D. Salinger novel The Catcher in the Rye. Lantagne wrote: The defendant's novel embodies typical fanfiction activity: taking a recognizable character and re-imagining them at a different stage of life.&quot; The court determined that the work was not permissible fair use and enjoined its publication.{This case [on appeal] recently settled, with Colting agreeing not to publish the book in the United States or Canada until the copyright on The Catcher in the Rye expires, but being able to publish it in other international territories, as long as it was not marketed using reference to Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, or the litigation between the parties.} First, the court concluded that 60 Years Later was not a parody because it &quot;contain[ed] no reasonably discernible rejoinder or specific criticism of any character or theme of Catcher. Rather than commenting on Holden Caulfield as a character, the purpose of 60 Years Later was to &quot;satisfy Holden's fans' passion&quot; for his character. The insertion of J.D. Salinger as a character in 60 Years Later was possibly, the court conceded, a criticism and commentary of Salinger, but not of The Catcher in the Rye. While the court admitted that there was some transformative element in the Salinger character in 60 Years Later, it was limited by the character's minor role in a work that was largely not transformative. The court concluded that merely aging the main character of a novel and altering the novel's setting was not sufficient to make the use transformative. Finally, because 60 Years Later was to be sold for profit, the court found that the first factor weighed against a finding of fair use. After finding The Catcher in the Rye to be an expressive work, which weighed the second factor against a finding of fair use, the court then concluded that 60 Years Later took much more from The Catcher in the Rye than was necessary for whatever transformative commentary it was trying to make. The court disapproved mainly of the use of the main character of The Catcher in the Rye. 60 Years Later also was similar to The Catcher in the Rye in structure, in a way that was not necessary to offer a commentary on Salinger (the only transformative purpose the court had found the work to have). Finally, the court found that 60 Years Later harmed the potential market for any permissible The Catcher in the Rye sequels. The court found that fair use should not protect the ability to publish unauthorized sequels: [B]ecause some artists may be further incentivized to create original works due to the availability of the right not to produce any sequels. This might be the case if, for instance, an author's artistic vision includes leaving certain portions or aspects of his character's story to the varied imaginations of his readers, or if he hopes that his readers will engage in discussion and speculation as to what happened subsequently.&quot; Although 60 Years Later may be classified as fanfiction, the overtly commercial purpose of the work makes it an imperfect representation of the genre because most fanfiction is not-for-profit.{See Tushnet, supra note 16, at 664. A recent development in fanfiction that has led to clashes is the rise of the use of fanfiction for charitable purposes. &quot;Fanfic auctions&quot; in which readers bid for the services of fanfiction authors to write a story based on their specifications, with the proceeds to benefit charity, are becoming more common. See Gabaldon, supra note 7 (&quot;Recently, a couple of people have drawn my attention to a person who's been posting on various boards about fund-raising for an uninsured friend named Stacie who has breast cancer. Her (the poster's) idea for fund-raising is to auction off a customer-written piece of fan-fic. . . .&quot;). Fanfiction written for such a commercial purpose may change the analysis. But see Tushnet, supra note 16, at 672-73 (quoting Gene Rodenberry).} Because the court weighed the novel's commercial nature against a finding of fair use, Salinger is not an ideal fanfiction precedent Lantagne goes on to discuss the case of Suntrust Bank v. Houghton Mifflin Co 268 F.3d 1257, 1259 (11th Cir. 2001). In that case a novel The Wind Done Gone, retelling Gone With the Wind from the PoV of the black characters, was held to be a parody as well as a sequel, to be &quot;highly transformative&quot;, and allowable as fair use. Sequels as Derivative Works A sequel uses the characters and/or setting of an existing work of fiction. It often constitutes a derivative work. The more distinctive and original the setting and characters are, and the more of those distinctive characteristics that are used in the sequel, the more likely the sequel is to be treated as a derivative work. On the matter of sequels, see the case of Anderson v. Stallone, 11 U.S.P.Q.2d 1161 (C.D. Cal. 1989). In that case, a Mr. Timothy Anderson prepared a sequel to the film Rocky III which he hoped would become Rocky IV. He presented it to MGM and Stallone. They eventually declined to buy it, and Anderson sued, claiming that the film Rocky IV that was made infringed his script. The district court held that Anderson's script was an infringing work not entitled to copyright protection. The court, citing Nichols v. Universal Pictures Corp.. 45 F.2d 119 (2d Cir. 1930), ruled that the characters in a copyrighted work are protected when they are &quot;developed with enough specificity to constitute protect able expression.&quot; Holding that the Rocky III characters met this standard, the court ruled that the Anderson script was a derivative work created without permission, and thus was not entailed to any copyright protection at all. Anderson appealed, and the case was settled out of court while this appeal was in progress. Details of the settlement were not disclosed. An unauthorized sequel to Harry Potter would probably face the same rule and reach the same result as in the Anderson case.It would depend on how much of the &quot;distinctive&quot; nature of JKR's characters and settings were used in the fanfic sequel. The Ethical and Emotional Arguments against Fan Fiction In This comment on the question user &quot;RedSonja&quot; writes: I know this is Law and you are looking for legal answers. But what you are proposing is plagiarism by the back door. JKR went to a lot of trouble inventing her universe. Why should you be able to just plug in and milk someone else's cow? If you are that highly original, write your own universe. Leaving aside the point that if the source is acknowledged it cannot be plagiarism, although it may be copyright infringement, this is essentially an ethical argument that the law should be different than it currently is. Some authors make an essentially emotional argument, saying that their works or their characters are in effect &quot;children of the mind&quot; and that others should not touch them without permission, whatever the law may say. Some find such arguments persuasive or powerful.. I disagree with these arguments. Lantagne on pages 172-179 of the law review article linked above, responds to such arguments, writing [Some footnotes omitted, others in {braces}]: Fanfiction is frequently devalued as not being &quot;real&quot; writing. This is closely related to the aesthetic argument. Copyright only protects creative expression.{See Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186, 219 (2002)} If the fanfiction is not creative expression, then it is not copyrightable. That, however, is a different question from whether it is infringing.{See Tushnet, supra note 16, at 681 (&quot;Fan fiction may not be copyrightable, but that does not make it an infringing use....&quot;).} It could be that the &quot;not real writing&quot; argument, translated into legalese, really expresses the idea that the work of fanfiction is not transformative enough.{See Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, 510 U.S. 569, 580 (1994) (&quot;If, on the contrary, the commentary has no critical bearing on the substance or style of the original composition, which the alleged infringer merely uses to get attention or to avoid the drudgery in working up something fresh, the claim to fairness in borrowing from another's work diminishes accordingly (if it does not vanish), and other factors, like the extent of its commerciality, loom larger.&quot;). Importantly, however, a work does not have to be transformative to be protected under fair use. See id. at 579. The fair use test is not forgiving of shortcuts.} However, this alone does not automatically make the work a copyright infringement because other fair use factors remain. Many authors frequently describe fanfiction as being the equivalent of an affront against their relatives.{See Gabaldon, supra note 7 (&quot;[L]et us just say that there's a difference between someone dating red-haired men, and the same someone trying to seduce my husband.... I wouldn't like people writing sex fantasies for public consumption about me or members of my family-why would I be all right with them doing it to the intimate creations of my imagination and personality?&quot;); Someone Is Angry on the Internet, supra note 11 (&quot;My characters are my children, I have been heard to say. I don't want people making off with them, thank you.&quot;); Hobb, supra note 7 (comparing fanfiction to PhotoShopping a family photo).} While the artistic protectiveness for one's creation is understandable, it is not a valid argument in U.S. copyright law. Artists have the right to control derivative works of their creations. If the fair use factors come out the wrong way [for the reuser], artists can prevent that use of their work. However, the purpose of copyright is not to prevent all use by others of an artistic work.{See, e.g., Campbell, 510 U.S. at 574-77 (&quot;From the infancy of copyright protection, some opportunity for fair use of copyrighted materials has been thought necessary to fulfill copyright's very purpose ...)} It never has been. The very character of the fair use test illustrates this, as it protects most strongly those uses of an artist's creation that the artist would never permit.{See Suntrust Bank v. Houghton Mifflin Co., 268 F.3d 1257, 1282-83 (11th Cir.2001) (Marcus, J., concurring) (&quot;To the extent the Suntrust [sought to impose editorial restrictions] to preserve Gone With the Wind's reputation, or protect its story from 'taint,' however, it may not now invoke copyright to further that goal. Of course, Suntrust can choose to license its derivative however it wishes and insist that those derivatives remain free of content it deems disreputable. Suntrust may be vigilant of Gone With the Wind's public image-but it may not use copyright to shield Gone With the Wind from unwelcome comment, a policy that would extend intellectual property protection 'into the precincts of censorship,' in Pat Conroy's words.&quot;)} Arguably, the more that a fanfiction work criticizes or parodies the original work, the more that fanfiction is a fair use. Thus, the argument that fanfiction should not be permitted because it transforms the original authors' characters mirrors the argument for exactly why fanfiction should be permitted under copyright law. ... The arguments that authors advance when they argue against copyright belong in a regime without fair use-a regime that would ignore the central purpose of U.S. copyright.&quot;' Such a conclusion is not only potentially untenable under the Constitution, but is also undesirable.&quot;' &quot;The public's interest in free expression . . . is significant.&quot;&quot; There is no question that courts have, throughout the history of copyright law, sought to protect that public interest. However, there is also no question that courts are inevitably swayed by value arguments. This should not be the case, but such influence is inevitable. ' Furthermore, value is a chicken-and-egg argument: Campbell did not base its decision on the popularity of music sampling, but surely the popularity informed Campbell's understanding of the critical commentary value of &quot;Pretty Woman.&quot; ... [T]he use of the word &quot;fair&quot; in &quot;fair use&quot; does not mean that it is fair to the author's wishes. Rather, it means that it is fair to the purposes of copyright. None of the emotional arguments frequently raised against fanfiction support a blanket proclamation that none of it is fair use. Truthfully, much of fanfiction may very well not be fair use. However, a true test case of fanfiction, logically evaluating each factor, would be invaluable in moving the fanfiction debate past the emotions of the participants. The argument should focus not on the emotions of the author or the quality of the writing, but on the fair use factors: on the purpose, character, and possible transformative nature of the work, on the amount of the original copyrighted work used, on the nature of the original copyrighted work, and on the effect on the market of the original copyrighted work. These are the factors that best protect the advancement of the twin goals of U.S. copyright. I agree with Lantagne here, it is often exactly those uses that a copyright owner will not want to approve that should be permitted as an exception to copyright. The limited statutory monopoly is granted in return for a contribution to the clutural fabric, and such work should therefore be available for use in further developing that fabric where it does not deprive the copyright holder of financial rewards, and where such uses in general are of public benefit. I take it thatr current US copyright law follows that goal, more or less. Non-US Law The rule on derivative works is also contained in the Berne Copyright Convention and the WTO's TRIPPS Agreement, and so applies in almost every country. Exceptions to copyright, however, vary widely. The concept of Fair Use is originally a purely US concept, although it has been adopted by Israel, and in part by a few other countries. Other countries generally have more specific and narrower exceptions, but often have several different exceptions. India has some 28 different exceptions in its copyright law. Few of these seem likely to be any more favorable to a fanfiction sequel than the US concept of fair use.
It is a fact that a particulate chess game was played on a particular date by certain specific players, who made specific moves. Facts are not protected by copyright. Anyone is free to report such a game, including the exact moves, and the names of the players. Such games are often used in books about chess, and the same thing is done in books about other games, such as bridge and go, where a record of the play is often kept. If someone else has described or analyzed such a game, you may not copy that person's wording without permission (except to the limited extent permitted by fair use or fair dealing). A chess diagram simply represents the position of the pieces in a standard way, and has no original content beyond those facts, and so is not protected by copyright either. If a person has invented a chess game or a series of chess moves that never took place to illustrate a point in analyzing chess, re-using that sequence of moves might make the new analysis a derivative work of the previous one, if the coverage of the invented sequence of moves is extensive. But that would not apply to the moves of an actual game that was actually played. There have even been cases of fictional stories based upon real historical chess games. For example &quot;Unicorn Variation&quot; by Roger Zelezney. 17 USC 102 says: In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work. This is the &quot;fact/expression distinction&quot; by which it is said that facts are not protected by copyright, although the form of expressing those facts often is. The same section has the list of kinds of protected works. This includes literary, dramatic, musical, and pictorial works, dance, audiovisual, sound and architectural works. A chess game does not fall into any of those categories. Thus it is ineligible form protection on two separate but related grounds. Beyond that, under the Feist vs Rural decision, a work must have an element of originality to be protected by copyright, and a list of the moves made by chess players has no original content, although an analysis of a game would. The copyright laws of many other countries have been interpreted similarly. As to the question of offense, in the US at least, and in most other countries, a true statement is never legally defamatory, even if the subject dislikes it. If it is true that Player X lost to Player Y on such and such a date, reporting that fact cannot be libel or any form of defamation. Otherwise the loser could never be named in any sports reporting.
The matter is not clear-cut (and the university lawyers are presumably relying on that fact). The bold part and following overstates the situation, especially the unconstrained &quot;publishing anything&quot; edict. You can publish whatever you want that the university doesn't have a legal interest in. The clause that says &quot;If you have co-authors or co-researchers you must ask their permission before publishing, and include their names&quot; is true, and defines a limit on their control. If you don't have co-authors, it's none of their legal business. (There can be issues regarding publishing an affiliation, so let's put that on hold). They can, however, prohibit you from claiming an affiliation with Pod U, unless you submit your works to some internal vetting organization. This requirement should, however, be stated somewhere perhaps in the rules of the graduate school (not just the student handbook); or the other legally-enforceable rules. You should also pay attention to the exact words that they use. You must ask permission to publish work done with a co-author (that's a fact: it's a standard requirement in universities). It is important to be sure that the information you publish is correct (clearly that is not in dispute). They are allowed to ask you to get X's approval. The First Amendment does not prohibit them from urging you to follow a course of action.
It should not surprise you that copyright protects the right to (among other things) make copies. There are limited exceptions that are considered &quot;fair use&quot;, like if you reproduce a limited amount of text for educational, reporting, or review purposes. Giving your friend a copy of a large portion of the text just because they want it would almost certainly violate copyright. Whether the book is available or out-of-print has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on who holds the copyright or whether your actions violate it. This is very different from giving your friend the book itself. The book itself is covered under the &quot;first sale doctrine&quot;, meaning that by buying a copy of the book, you buy the right to sell, transfer, or dispose of that particular copy, but it doesn't give you the right to make more copies. I will note that in practice, it is vanishingly unlikely that the copyright holder would ever learn of your isolated instance of limited infringement in the first place (especially since it's out of print), much less bring legal action against you for making a single copy that did not affect their bottom line.
The Apache 2.0 license purports to be irrevocable, but it also presupposes that the supposed licensor has the right to grant permission to copy. In this case, that is untrue, so there never was a proper license and nothing to revoke (the copyright owner grants permission in the form of "a license" which is a legal abstraction, that normally is specified in the license document). An end-user snared by this illegal license might attempt to sue the author because of the legal screw-up but paragraph 9 says that the supposed licensor cannot be held liable. In this case, though, "licensor" is defined not as the person who hands you the license document, but as the copyright owner. So it's the employer who would be not liable under the terms of the document (but since the employer had nothing to do with the license, it's as though the license never existed). The end-user is a secondary infringer (the employee is the primary infringer, in illegally distributing the material). Under US law, that doesn't matter, the user is still liable. Under UK law, secondary infringement includes the element that you have to have reason to know that the copy is infringing, which in the scenario that you describe is not the case.
There is no fixed amount or proportion of a copyrighted text which may be quoted without infringement. Whether quoting without permission is a fair use (which is what this question asks) depends on the totality of the circumstances, including the purpose of the use, the effect of the use on the market or potential market for the original, and the nature of the original work. In the Harper vs Nation case, quotes totaling roughly 300 words from the autobiography of former President George H. W. Bush (which was many hundreds of pages long) were held to be the "heart" of the work, and quoting them was found not to be fair use. There is no formula which can be rigidly or automatically applied to determine if a quote is a fair use. Note also that fair use is a strictly US legal concept, and a use which would be fair use under US law might well be copyright infringement under the laws of the EU, the UK, or other countries.
First, the seller has not violated copyright law by selling you this book. Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley &amp; Sons, Inc. provides the precedent. The Supreme Court ruled that the First Sale doctrine applies to &quot;grey market&quot; imports of books, so buying a book cheaply in another country and then shipping it to the USA is entirely legal, regardless of what the publisher would like. The court wrote: Putting section numbers to the side, we ask whether the “first sale” doctrine applies to protect a buyer or other lawful owner of a copy (of a copyrighted work) lawfully manufactured abroad. Can that buyer bring that copy into the United States (and sell it or give it away) without obtaining permission to do so from the copyright owner? Can, for example, someone who purchases, say at a used bookstore, a book printed abroad subsequently resell it without the copyright owner’s permission? In our view, the answers to these questions are, yes. Wikipedia also has an article on the case. As for your recourse against the seller, this would seem to be very limited unless they specifically promised you the US edition, or the content is materially different between US and Indian editions. You don't say what kind of book this is. Textbooks typically have identical content. Fiction and other entertainment books generally have local idioms and terminology changed (e.g. &quot;pavement&quot; versus &quot;sidewalk&quot;) but will otherwise be the same. You might be able to claim that this is a material difference, but its likely to be difficult.
This kind of quotation, for commentary, criticism, or reference, is generally allowed without obtaining permission. In the US, this falls under fair use (see 17 USC 107. In the UK and most commonwealth countries, it falls under fair dealing. In other countries there are various exceptions to copyright that will probably cover this. Even answers that do not directly quote the rule books often use information from those rulebooks to write an answer. Facts and ideas are never protected by copyright, so this is not going to be an issue. See 17 USC 102(b), which provides: (b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work. As a comment by user Trish reminds, game rules are facts and are not protected, although their exact wording may be.