PR via lawsuit: unknown sues TWILIGHT author for plagiarism

Novelist in Paradise · Aug 6, 2009

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090804/stage_nm/us_books_twilight

Excerpt from the article:

J. Craig Williams, who represents "The Nocturne" author Jordan Scott, told Reuters by phone that the passages in question involve few word-for-word similarities but that the two books have similar plot and character points...

In a cease-and-desist letter Williams sent to Hachette Book Group, he provided comparisons from the two books of a wedding, a sex-on-the-beach episode and a passage where a human-turned-vampire describes the wrenching change.

As another instance of similarities, Williams pointed out that characters in both books call their wives "love."

...He said Scott does not plan to seek monetary damages.

alleycat · Aug 6, 2009

I'm sure it's not just a publicity stunt in order to generate sales for an obscure novel by an unknown writer.

I see that they "plan" to sue, but I guess they haven't gotten around to filing those court papers yet.

RonjaCecilie · Aug 6, 2009

Didn't that happen to J.K. Rowling too? Almost the exact same thing?

sadron · Aug 6, 2009

Oh dear, such drama again.

James D. Macdonald · Aug 6, 2009

Yeah, it happened to Rowling too. That suit was dismissed with prejudice after it turned out that that author had faked the evidence.

In this case, it's already appeared that Meyers' work was copyrighted before this other person's book. I don't think this is going to fly.

kuatolives · Aug 6, 2009

Two identical vampire novels? I don't believe it.

ChaosTitan · Aug 6, 2009

For an existing discussion: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=150640

OpheliaRevived · Aug 6, 2009

That's ridiculous.

James D. Macdonald · Aug 6, 2009

kuatolives said:
Two identical vampire novels? I don't believe it.

Not identical. A couple of widely scattered, random similarities. This is garbage.

Ken Schneider · Aug 6, 2009

Sketchy at best. I do see some similarity, though.

I think the wording is different enough that the case won't fly.

James D. Macdonald · Aug 6, 2009

See also http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/aug/05/stephenie-meyer-plagiarism-claim and http://www.twilightlexicon.com/2009/08/04/stephenie-meyers-claim-supported-aka-copyright-101/

cbenoi1 · Aug 7, 2009

Here's your tell-tale sentence:

"I think the fans have to read both books and make up their own mind, like a judge is going to have to," Williams said.

Yep. Buy the book. That's all they want.

-cb

ChristineR · Aug 7, 2009

This is why the judge in the Rowling case (which had much less merit, IMHO), dismissed the thing with prejudice and slapped the author with a huge fine. Judges do not like seeing the law turned into a book salesman.

Anyhow, my take on it was that smeyer has managed to hit on each and every romantic vampire cliche, with a few of the "demon child" points thrown in for good measure and a healthy smattering of romance novel sex to frost this sugary prose.

Pesimisticus · Aug 7, 2009

You know, SMeyer should counter-sue RE: the use of 'love', just to make a point about people being stupid.

TWILIGHT was published 'before' the Nocturne, thus, using Scott's logic, Meyer should say that Scott plagiarized her buy having her vampire man call his woman 'love'.

That and the examples used in the letter where complete crap; so many of them weren't even close to similar, to the point I was scratching my head trying to find the similarities.

Some people are such idiots.

Kitty Pryde · Aug 7, 2009

I'm calling J. Craig Williams, hotshot lawyer dude, and suing this post for plagiarizing my earlier post about this crazy author!

OpheliaRevived · Aug 7, 2009

This lawsuit is silly. If we followed this logic, L J Smith could sue Ms. Meyer. I'm happy for this author's success, even though I'm not a huge fan. Anyone that can sell that many books has *something*.

DMarie84 · Aug 7, 2009

It seems like this tends to happen with whatever book becomes the next big thing. Someone wants a part of the pie and decides they'd like to sue.

Just another ridiculous incident in our lawsuit happy nation.

I think the writer should stop making a fool of himself and work on another book.

PR via lawsuit: unknown sues TWILIGHT author for plagiarism

Novelist in Paradise

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