Screenwriting for Profit

Chapter 19Writers’ Protections

Ideas vs. Stories

In an age where piracy, intellectual property theft, and identity theft are rampant, it is all the more important for all writers to protect their material. After laboring over the research and painstaking work required to write and hone a screenplay, writers must be proactive in protecting their work. Copyright is the best protection for writers and intellectual property, which we will go into more detail shortly, but from a linear standpoint, everything starts with an idea.

Ideas are common to many of us. Whatever your idea for a movie may be, I can guarantee you that at least a dozen other people in the world right now have the same idea. I have had many ideas for films over the years, which ...