Page:The librarian's copyright companion, by James S. Heller, Paul Hellyer, Benjamin J. Keele, 2012.djvu/39

Chapter Two. Restrictions on Use permitted without the owner's permission, the easiest way to avoid copyright infringement is not to copy when you don't have to.

A derivative work is "a work based upon one or more preexisting works."

A derivative work may be created when someone recasts, reformats, or adapts an earlier work; obvious examples include translations and sequels. If the earlier work is protected by copyright, preparation of a derivative work without permission may infringe the copyright.

For example, Elmore Leonard has the exclusive right to translate his novel Get Shorty to another language, and also to authorize a screenplay or film from the novel. If Mr. Leonard refuses to give permission to translate his novel, or to prepare a screenplay or film from it, someone who does so could be liable for infringement.

Be careful not to confuse derivative works with works that merely borrow ideas from earlier material. Remember that copyright only protects the expression of ideas. A work that merely follows a formula or draws inspiration from an earlier material is not a "derivative work" within the meaning of copyright law. Thus, the Superman movies are derivative works based on the Superman comic book character; the Spider-Man franchise, while it may follow the Superman genre, is not a derivative work based on Superman because it has its own names, storyline, and characters.

Like collective works, the copyright status of a derivative work is distinct from that of the original work from which it was derived. This means that a screenplay based on a novel will be copyrighted independently of the novel, so long as it meets the requirements for protection: an original work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression.

What about abridgments or abstracts? Whether a small portion or summary of a copyrighted work is a derivative work—and therefore requires permission from the original work's copyright owner—depends mostly on the extent to which the summary substitutes for the original. The more a