Sherrilyn Kenyon Suing Cassandra Clare

On one hand, yes, a lot of fantasy series have similar elements, and you can't copyright ideas. On the other, this...sounds just like the sorts of plagiarism Cassie Clair was accused of, back in the day, and I'm disinclined to dismiss the claims as unlikely when the writer has a track record of stealing ideas, characters, and prose.

But back on that first hand, however, Milan does note Kenyon doesn't mention Clare copying any acts of expression.

Maybe Clare used Milan's books as a template, and Kenyon is morally outraged, but moral outrage aside, that might or might not be legal. It'll depend on the degree of similarity. A court taking a hard look at all the facts is probably the only way to figure this out.

So... I'll get the popcorn going?

As much as I might dislike aspects of Clare's writing, I think Kenyon might be reaching a bit here. Or maybe every single paranormal romance author from 1998 onward should sue every other paranormal author. And Charles deLint, Emma Bull, Tanya Huff, Diane Duane, and about a dozen others from mainstream SFF should hit all the later PNR authors with infringement suits.

Re: Clare and her interactions with fans: I follow her on social media and she is very active with answering fan questions, she retweets and re-blogs fan art, and she is open and honest about things she probably shouldn't be. (Her thoughts on the new TV series "Shadowhunters" specifically).

AnneMarble said:

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Most similar things aren't really that similar. Fans will accuse authors of ripping people off all the time -- often because of general similarities. But most of those fans don't understand intellectual property laws. (Heck, neither do most lawyers. )

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The fact that Stephenie Meyer has not taken EL James to court over 50 Shades drives this statement home for me. Twilight is what got me back into reading, and got me into YA. I read it several times over the course of a year or maybe two. So when I finally force read the Shades trilogy I was incensed at how similar it was. Nearly word for word in some spots. I wanted to sue James on behalf of Meyer I was so outraged. Then I got over it, because I realized there isn't anything original anymore. And I don't understand intellectual property laws enough to warrant my fan outrage.

AnneMarble said:

That's good to know. I think some people are still basing everything on the way she acted when she was in her twenties. If someone judged me based on the way I acted when I was in my twenties, I would roll on the floor laughing. Or say "Hi, Bro!"

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I also think that when you're first starting out as a writer you are very precious about it and as you grow with it you realize no one is ever happy with you and the loudest voices are the ones accusing you of something. I don't know anything about Clare's time as a fanfic writer, I came into the Shadowhunter books way late. But I'm a fan. Not enough of one to be overly protective of her and her books, but enough to be saddened when I hear things like this about someone who's writing I admire.

If you read the suit it shows that in the past there resemblance included the main characters being called "dark hunters" and having "marks" some of which seemed to be basically the same as Kenyon's. So maybe the sensitivity holds over from the time when the works really did look extremely similar. That said, Kenyon trademarking just using the word "dream-hunter" or "were-hunter" is, well....

From the link:

On Friday, Kenyon sued Cassandra Clare aka Judith Rumelt aka Judith Lewis, claiming her "Shadowhunter" series initially used Kenyon's trademark "darkhunter."
After Kenyon demanded that Clare remove the word "darkhunter" from her work, Clare used the term "shadowhunter" for her protagonists instead, according to the lawsuit. The word "hunter" was also removed from the book title.

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INAL, let's get that out of the way. And I never interacted with CC in her fanfic days, though I'm aware of the kerfluffles with her name attached.

SK likely had a point with "darkhunters" as it was trademarked. "Shadowhunters" was not part of that trademark, apparently, so the point is somewhat blunted.

You can't copyright ideas, and since samples are usually required for trademarking, you probably can't trademark them, either. (I honestly don't know.) But there are too many precedents for satire and interpretations of characters and series. Going by this reasoning, MAD magazine would have gone out of business decades ago.

"Both the Dark-Hunter series and the Shadowhunter series are about an elite band of warriors that must protect the human world from the unseen paranormal threat that seeks to destroy humans as they go about their daily lives," the 29-page complaint states. "These hunters, whether 'dark' or 'shadow,' preserve the balance between good and evil, protecting humans from being consumed or enslaved."

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That's basically the premise of every [insert paranormal]-hunter in the history of paranormal lit.

You could probably even twist Dumbledore's Army into this same category of "warriors protecting humans from being consumed or enslaved."

It's too broad.

According to her website's frequently asked questions section, Clare says she got the idea for the "Shadowhunter" series from footprints on the ceiling of a tattoo shop. It "looked like some fabulous supernatural battle had been fought there," her website states

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I know there are a lot of people with a Clare-shaped axe to grind, but this version of events is entirely possible, even probable. There's no reason you can't take an event unique to you, couple it with inspiration from an existing work, and make your own universe out of the two. That's how inspiration works.

I read through the complaint, and, dear God above, I couldn't get the taste of sour grapes out of my mouth.

Of course, I've never heard of Sherrilyn Kenyon before this. And while I wouldn't call myself the most widely read person on the internet, I'm not exactly new to the library block.

Most of her complaints are BS, and I hope this case gets tossed out on its ass. If I was one of those creative judges, I'd charge Kenyon with wasting the Court's time, and sentence her to a year of scrolling through the Urban Fantasy section of TV Tropes. Because that's what most -- if not all -- of the "similarities" are.

ZachJPayne said:

Of course, I've never heard of Sherrilyn Kenyon before this. And while I wouldn't call myself the most widely read person on the internet, I'm not exactly new to the library block.

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In fairness, you may not have heard of her, but she's a longstanding heavyweight in the UF, para-romance genre. I've got a relative who's crazy-fond of her novels, and her characters, some of which apparently keep their own blogs.

It would hardly be the first time an established, even best-selling, author got a nervous tic because a YA series was doing well in "their" genre. Laurell K Hamilton came out swinging when Twilight took off, claiming the genre she "pioneered" had been hijacked for children, or some such. This stuff always seems to center on paranormal fiction, especially properties involving vampires.

Honest question, removed from any particulars of this case:

At what point are two works so similar that the story/character similarities can actually be considered copyright infringement even if there's no technical plagiarism in the sense of borrowing exact words?

No, you can't own an idea. But I feel there's a big difference between me writing a story about a boy who finds out he's a wizard and me writing a story that is literally a rewriting of Harry Potter with the names changed. Very little copying is that extreme, but where is the line drawn?

DancingMaenid said:

Honest question, removed from any particulars of this case:

At what point are two works so similar that the story/character similarities can actually be considered copyright infringement even if there's no technical plagiarism in the sense of borrowing exact words?

No, you can't own an idea. But I feel there's a big difference between me writing a story about a boy who finds out he's a wizard and me writing a story that is literally a rewriting of Harry Potter with the names changed. Very little copying is that extreme, but where is the line drawn?

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If you write your boy wizard (assuming it's not parody), and the structure of the story is the same, beginning with him being dropped off at a careless caregiver's house after his parents' murder, after the first chapter is dedicated to showing how dismally dull the caregivers are, etc. and after the magical caregivers sneak him onto the stoop in the middle of the night to be found the next morning because his parents have been murdered.

Then, if you fast forward a few years and show him living in a basement or under the sink, and that he's got a magic scar and is forced to serve his oafish relatives, and there's a trip to the aquarium where he interacts with a shark and even though sharks shouldn't be able to stop, this one does and looks right at him. Then the oaf notices and is oafish and is then drenched when all of the water in the tank rushes out for no reason, only some of it stays where it is - because magic - and so on and so forth until he gets to the magical school where he's the best at everything, and the chosen one, and there's a 3-headed dragon, etc. Everything lines up along the same track as the original. It has the same beats, despite minor changes. It has the same outcome.

Plagiarism is seldom subtle. There was actually a case against a writer in Russia about a girl who had a magic scar on her nose and a magic guitar that was close enough to the HP storyline that it was legally declared plagiarism. Very very popular in the writer's home country.

DancingMaenid said:

Honest question, removed from any particulars of this case:

At what point are two works so similar that the story/character similarities can actually be considered copyright infringement even if there's no technical plagiarism in the sense of borrowing exact words?

No, you can't own an idea. But I feel there's a big difference between me writing a story about a boy who finds out he's a wizard and me writing a story that is literally a rewriting of Harry Potter with the names changed. Very little copying is that extreme, but where is the line drawn?

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That has to be decided in court, with a jury, and it's really really complicated.

It's very hard to explain to people who aren't writers or tangential to writing that even word-for-word copying is a problem.

And when it's ideas rather than word-for-word, well it's monumentally difficult. Look at cases like Star Wars vs the original Battle Star Galactica.


You have to explain things to the jury convincingly enough that they understand the argument in detail, whether you're the plaintiff or the defendant.

jjdebenedictis said:

So... I'll get the popcorn going?

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Dibs on the lemonade and sandwich concessions.

ZachJPayne said:

Of course, I've never heard of Sherrilyn Kenyon before this. And while I wouldn't call myself the most widely read person on the internet, I'm not exactly new to the library block.

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Kenyon's books get sold in drug stores and grocery stores. She is a Big Ol' Deal, a.k.a. a bestseller.

That's why I'm getting out the popcorn. This is Star Author vs. Star Author, Battle of the (niche) Literary Legends.

As for the complaint, on the surface of it, this doesn't look like a strong case to me either. But IANAL, and the subtle sort of copying of ideas that a court case might tease out was the sort of copying that CC was doing back in her fanfiction days. Might she have learned her lesson? Sure, but she's also someone who has established she was once willing to be sneaky-dishonest, especially when faced with pressure to keep writing on a challenging schedule, and there's always the possibility she didn't learned her lesson. If I remember correctly, she didn't demonstrate much remorse after she got caught, way back when.

Could go either way, is what I'm sayin'. BenPanced, could you pass me a lemonade? This popcorn's salty.

AnneMarble said:

*Sighs and tears up her manuscript, Parry Hotter and the Stoned Sorcerers * (Kidding. Except now I want to write that...)

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I once did a crack!fic featuring Harry Pothead and a lot of Gryffindors with the munchies. No one seemed to mind.

AnneMarble said:

*Sighs and tears up her manuscript, Parry Hotter and the Stoned Sorcerers * (Kidding. Except now I want to write that...)

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Do eeeeeet...

What about the sequel, Harry Pothead and the Stoned Sorcerers go to the White Castle?

From the article it sounds kind of ridiculous but I wonder if there's something there? Who knows.

AnneMarble said:

*Sighs and tears up her manuscript, Parry Hotter and the Stoned Sorcerers * (Kidding. Except now I want to write that...)

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I like to make up "adult" Harry Potter titles for fun.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stones.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Cigarettes.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Ass Cabin.


Now back to the thread...

As for the case, I have the feeling it wouldn't even exist if not for Clare's history. I also don't get the argument about losing sales because of it. If anything, readers often seek out books similar to those they like.

PNR readers are incredibly open to seeking out books in the genre. If anything, the two authors will see their sales jump from this. I have no dog in this fight, other than chomping popcorn on the side. I've read partway through Clare's Draco fanfic series a long time ago, but it didn't hold me like, say DementorDelta's work or some of the other Potterfic masters. I read one chapter into the first MI book and set it aside out of its sheer predictability (I am super, super picky about the YA I read).

I gave Kenyon a few tries, because an inky black part of my soul quite likes reading and writing abusefics...but hers were too histrionic, repetitious, and not mentally deep enough for me.

If the court case gets thrown out I'll be happy the court saw reason...but sad to be denied what will surely be a pissing-contest sideshow.