: Re: Using a world created by someone else for your own fiction What is the procedure if you want to set a story in a world created by someone else?If, after reading someone else's novel I came

@Marchetta100

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Most books have this page with small-print at the front or back which usually goes like (example from the book nearest to my bed):

© Dan Simmons 2004
Hyperion copyright © 1989;
All rights reserved

This means that the book has specific copyright claimed to it. In most countries (I am not a lawyer, don't blame/believe me, yada...) copyright is implicit so the fact that a book doesn't have such a page doesn't mean there is no copyright.

Now a book may be in the public domain and these are either very old books - 200 years to be on the safe side or books that have been explicitly released to the public domain (with something like "I, Jakub Hampl, author of this post, hereby release it to the public domain.")

Then you may use the characters, the world, hell even the storyline anyway you wish. So if you were greatly inspired by the Diamond Sutra you can freely use a world with Subhūti chatting of with Budha all you like. Alas the Hyperion of Dan Simmons will stay forbidden for quite a while.

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