Case: Copyrights/Originality (11th Cir.)

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed a federal district court’s grant of summary judgment to famed novelist Stephen King and others in an individual’s action against them for copyright infringement. The Eleventh Circuit agreed with the district court that character names — here, Restin Dane and Roland Deschain — do not merit copyright protection and that there are certain similarities at issue in this appeal that lack originality, but even assuming that the parties’ characters share some similarities concerning their knightly heritage, travel to different times and parallel worlds, Western attire, fictionalized Alamo histories, and knife-wielding, these similarities are scènes à faire ...