Source: https://www.mediainstitute.org/2013/01/29/copyright-interests-and-history-fiction/
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 08:03:40+00:00

Document:
In Effie Film, LLC v. Pomerance,1 the court grappled with a fascinating intellectual property conflict involving the peculiar free expression values that are implicated when copyright interests intersect with historic facts in the context of history fiction.
Eve Pomerance owned a copyright in two screenplays about the dramatic and intertwined lives of John Ruskin, John Everett Millais, and Euphemia (“Effie”) Gray – two stars of the Victorian art world, and the woman who was married to each of them. In turn, Emma Thompson wrote a screenplay about the same historical figures. That Emma Thompson work was turned into a film, which included as its actors Emma Thompson herself, as well as Dakota Fanning and Robbie Coltrane. In determining whether the Thompson film, “Effie,” infringed on the Pomerance works, “The King of the Golden River” and “The Secret Trials of Effie Gray,” the court had to separate those elements of the works that were factual history, and thus not subject to copyright protection, and those creative elements of the initial copyrighted works, which were.
1. Effie Film, LLC v. Pomerance, __ F. Supp. 2d __, 2012 WL 6584485 (S.D.N.Y. 2012).
2. Hoehling v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 618 F.2d 972 (2nd Cir. 1980).
4. Nash v. CBS, Inc., 899 F.2d 1537, 1542 (7th Cir.1990).
6. Nash v. CBS, Inc., 899 F.2d 1537, 1540-41 (7th Cir.1990).
7. Effie Film, LLC v. Pomerance, __ F. Supp. 2d __, 2012 WL 6584485 (S.D.N.Y. 2012).
9. Id., citing Jeanne C. Fromer, “Expressive Incentives in Intellectual Property,” 98 Va. L.Rev. 1745, 1753-56 (2012); Wendy J. Gordon, “A Property Right in Self-Expression: Equality and Individualism in the Natural Law of Intellectual Property,” 102 Yale L.J. 1533 (1993).
10. Effie Film, LLC v. Pomerance, __ F. Supp. 2d __, 2012 WL 6584485 (S.D.N.Y. 2012).
13. Id., citing Peter Novick, That Noble Dream (1998) (discussing the history and structure of the American historical profession); John Higham, History (1965) (same).
14. Effie Film, LLC v. Pomerance, __ F. Supp. 2d __, 2012 WL 6584485 (S.D.N.Y. 2012).

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