Passionate about IP! Since June 2003 the IPKat has covered copyright, patent, trade mark, designs, info-tech and confidentiality issues from a mainly UK and European perspective. Read, post comments and participate!

The team is Eleonora Rosati, Annsley Merelle Ward and Merpel. E-mail the Kats here!

The team is joined by GuestKats Kevin Bercimuelle-Chamot, Jocelyn Bosse, Alessandro Cerri, Anastasiia Kyrylenko, Marcel Pemsel and Anna Maria Stein.

SpecialKats: Verónica Rodríguez Arguijo (TechieKat), Rose Hughes (PatKat) and Chijioke Okorie (Africa Correspondent).

InternKats: Asude Sena Moya and Söğüt Atilla.
Home / Alleged plagiarism / attribution of sources / Jeremy Phillips / romance novels / Meticulous or misappropriation?

Meticulous or misappropriation?

- , , ,
The IPKat thanks his enthusiastic friend Birgit Clark once again for rooting out some curiosities for his delectation. This time, it's news of a nasty and very unromantic spat between two romance writers. According to Publishers Weekly:
"veteran romance novelist Cassie Edwards is revered by her fans for her meticulous research when writing books. From Savage Torment to Savage Sunrise, her books (of which there are more than 100 ...) have detailed descriptions of Native American religion, weaponry, cuisine and other subjects. But this week, the romance review blog Smart Bitches ... called attention to some striking similarities and, in some cases, verbatim passages, between Edwards’s works and a number of nonfiction books about Native American history and customs".
while Ms Edwards' publishers have stood by their woman, it appears that there is quite a bit of circumstantial evidence out there on the internet:
"Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books co-authors Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan found the texts using Google Book Search, and have posted 32 side-by-side comparisons of excerpts from Edwards’s books and nonfiction works including Land of the Spotted Eagle by Luther Standing Bear (Bison Books) and Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas by Mari
Sandoz (Bison Books), as well as an article from Defenders magazine, the quarterly publication of Defenders of Wildlife. ..."
Signet, one of Ms Edwards' publishers. has issued a statement that
“anyone may use facts, ideas and theories developed by another author, as well as any material in the public domain. Ms Edwards’s researched historical novels are precisely the kinds of original, creative works that this copyright policy promotes. Although it may be common in academic circles to meticulously footnote every source and provide citations or bibliographies, even though not required by copyright law, such a practice is virtually unheard of for a popular novel aimed at the consumer market.”
Right: the IPKat always needed help with more difficult cases ...
Meticulous or misappropriation? Meticulous or misappropriation? Reviewed by Jeremy on Thursday, January 10, 2008 Rating: 5

1 comment:

  1. AnonymousThursday, 10 January 2008 at 17:07:00 GMT

    You missed a trick there, Jeremy. The title should have been "Bodice Rip-off".

    ReplyDelete

All comments must be moderated by a member of the IPKat team before they appear on the blog. Comments will not be allowed if the contravene the IPKat policy that readers' comments should not be obscene or defamatory; they should not consist of ad hominem attacks on members of the blog team or other comment-posters and they should make a constructive contribution to the discussion of the post on which they purport to comment.

It is also the IPKat policy that comments should not be made completely anonymously, and users should use a consistent name or pseudonym (which should not itself be defamatory or obscene, or that of another real person), either in the "identity" field, or at the beginning of the comment. Current practice is to, however, allow a limited number of comments that contravene this policy, provided that the comment has a high degree of relevance and the comment chain does not become too difficult to follow.

Learn more here: http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/p/want-to-complain.html

Subscribe to: Post Comments ( Atom )
Powered by Blogger.