Twilight Plagiarism Drama Unlikely to Take a Bite from Stephanie Meyer’s Readership
Stephanie Meyer, author of the bestselling Twilight series of books, has been served with a cease and desist order. The letter was sent by lawyers acting for author Jordan S. Scott to Meyers’ publisher, Hachette Book Group USA. From The Guardian:
The letter claims that the latest volume in Meyer’s Twilight series, Breaking Dawn, which was published last year, “shows a striking and substantial similarity” to Scott’s book The Nocturne, and asks the publisher how it intends “to cease and desist from any further copyright infringement and to compensate my client for her damages.”Unsurprisingly, this is a huge story, which makes it all the more odd that it’s been impossible to find anything solid about Jordan’s writing in general or Nocturne in particular. Jordan’s Web site lists the book as “sold out” and it is unavailable from Amazon. Google Books lists another title by the same author, Texas Aggies. This afternoon, The New York Times’ Art Beat added more about Meyer’s challenger:
Hachette called the claim “completely without merit” and said that any lawsuit would be “defended vigorously.”
Jordan Scott, who describes herself as a singer, screenwriter and college student on her Web site jordanscott.com, wrote a little-known novel called “The Nocturne” as a teenager, releasing parts of it online before publishing it as a book in 2006.
posted by Linda L. Richards at 1:35 PM
3 Comments:
I just read through the passages that the law firm of Sedgewick, Detert, Moran & Arnold LLP (the law firm representing Jordon Scott who is author of The Nocturne) claims that S. Meyer “misappropriated both the ideas and in many instances the text” (http://images.eonline.com/static/news/pdf/TwilightInfringement.pdf) and these so called similarities and accusations are far-fetched in my opinion.
Both books have a vampire marrying a human, and then of course the sex on the honeymoon, then the human gets pregnant by the spawn of the vampire and then gives birth to said child. These are only brief comparisons of the said excerpts that they claim have been “misappropriated”; therefore I do implore you to read these passages for yourself to see the way they claim that S. Meyer used the same text and ideas, because it is easily seen that the passages they show comparing the two books is absurd. The above link should take you directly to the letter from J. Craig Williams (a partner of the above law firm) which is addressed to Carol Ross (of the Hatchette Book Group).
Wow..I am surprised they didn't also serve the publishers of Webster's Dictionary, because Ms. Scott's has an equal amount of things in common with that as it does Breaking Dawn! I suppose some people will do anything to get their name in the paper.
Frankly, it could be that Jordan Scott is trying to drum up publicity for her own book or her own writing career. This may not be the wisest way to do it, though.
Also, it could be that she saw the idea of a vampire marrying a human girl, having sex, impregnating her and giving birth to a child as the story line and felt a little sting.
Whether or not the idea is so unique that it's actionable remains up the in the air.
I've not heard too many stories along those lines, but I don't know that it's truly one of a kind, since we all know, there's no such thing as a unique idea anymore--it's all in how you tell the story. So, the question becomes, did Meyer differentiate her story enough (i.e. through plot, wording, and characterization)?
Interesting indeed.
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