TABLE OF CONTENTS
When Should I Give Someone a Co-Writing Credit?
To answer that question, first it is important to understand one of the fundamentals of copyright law: the idea/expression dichotomy. Under copyright law, only an author’s original expressions that are fixed in a tangible medium (i.e. written down or recorded) are protected by copyright, whereas ideas and concepts are not. This prevents someone from claiming ownership over standard tropes such as the “vigilante superhero” because if concepts like this could be owned, the impetus to create would come to a screeching halt, as there would be a barrier to nearly every story a writer may want to tell.
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