A Study For the Protection of Fan Fiction in the Copyright Law

• Main Authors: Lo, Shih-Yong, 羅時雍
• Other Authors: Guo-Hua Zhang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/352h3c

碩士 === 國立雲林科技大學 === 科技法律研究所 === 106 === With the growing popularity of anime subculture and advancement of technology, more and more people can get familiar with or even get involved in the creation of fan fiction. However, as the creation process of fan fiction become a mix of themes and plots from different authors, the creation of fan fiction itself has deviated from a precious activity and become a behavior of plagiarizing other’s innovation. Such change makes the motivation to create fan fiction no longer naïve and original. In order to study the infringement caused by leveraging character, plot or story background from other’s work during the creation, we first give an overview of fan fiction and introduce several genres of it. In the subsequent sections, we study the related judicial precedent and doctrine from the U.S.A and Taiwan to discuss whether the character and plot in a creation are protected by copyright and whether it is required to make a statement when borrowing element from other creations. This study aims to bring attention of authors who wrote fan fiction to view their own works seriously as well as respect that from others. Overly plagiarizing from other’s work should be avoided to manifest the value of creators.