: Re: Can I retell a popular manga series as a novel and query it to an agent? I’m working on my first draft of a retelling of a popular manga series from the 90s. It has been adapted and

@Mendez196

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I am not a lawyer. Get a lawyer if you need legal advice. Additionally, copyright laws vary widely from country to country. What may be perfectly legal in one country may be a slam-dunk lawsuit in another.

In the US, the Copyright Act of 1976, section 102(a) says:

"Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in
original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of
expression..."

However, section 102(b) further clarifies:

"In no case does copyright protection for an original work of
authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of
operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in
which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such
work."

Copyright specifically protects the authorship; it does not protect the idea. The thorny part is determining the dividing line between those two.

If you sit down and recreate a graphic work in text form scene for scene, even if you rename the characters or make other trivial changes, you're almost certainly infringing. If, however, your story only shares major plot points with the other work, it becomes a much harder question to answer.

Suppose I wanted to write a story about a man who comes into contact with a native tribe who is being exploited for their resources by the dominant culture. The protagonist learns the natives' way of life, falls in love with a native woman, and joins with the natives to defeat his own people.

That describes the plot of both Avatar and Dances With Wolves, to name just two. I could write a new story with the same overall plot and, assuming I didn't copy the detailed elements of another work, be reasonably safe from a claim of copyright infringement.

When you say "It has been adapted and redone at least 6-10 times as an Asian drama TV series in many different countries," do you mean the overall idea or the specific story? Is the story original to the manga or does the manga retell an older story? If you translated Disney's Beauty and the Beast to text, with all of it's scenes and detailed characters included, you'd be infringing. But if you wrote a story based on the original tale, you would almost certainly not be infringing. The story of Beauty and the Beast is public domain. Disney's authorship in their particular version is protected by copyright.

Whether you would be infringing in adapting a manga depends entirely on what you mean by "adapting."

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