Back in 1986, or it may have been 1987, I didn’t realize that a simple trip to the local video store was going to introduce me to one of the most widely known names in the world today. In fact, I didn’t even realize that such a momentous thing had occurred until my brother told me about the recent developments earlier this week.
You see… my brothers and I, as kids (who am I kidding? nothing has changed really as we grew up), liked to watch really awful movies. The Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror section of the video store was the best. And in 1986, a little movie called Troll was released. It is the story about a boy named Harry Potter (Junior, his father is also Harry Potter), who learns to use magic to fight a troll who is attempting to take over the world, or at least to turn it into a place full of magical creatures.
The only reason this has come up is that it seems the original writer and director of Troll, John Carl Buechler, wants to remake his film, with a larger budget (£20 million) and according to various sources Warner Bros. is trying to stop him from infringing on their copyright. The question is, can you copyright something you did not create first?
Its not as if this is some random director trying to make waves by making a film with a character named Harry Potter. This is a man wishing to remake a film he made 22 years ago and utilize the same character names he used 22 years ago, 4 years prior to the 1990 bolt of inspiration that J.K. Rowling claims began her endeavour of the now more well known use of the name.
As far as I know, Buechler has made no attempt to sue Ms. Rowling, to force her to change the name, nor to ask for any monetary compensation, he only claims that since he used the name first in a copyrighted work, but didn’t copyright the name specifically, it places the name “Harry Potter” in the public domain where anyone can use it.
Who is going to win? Personally, I feel that Buechler is right, at least in the case of his movie. He used the name first and should be allowed to continue to use the name in remakes of that work. But we’ll have to wait and see what the courts decide if Warner Bros. continues to head down that path.
All in all, it makes me paranoid about the things that I write. Now I’ll probably have to make sure I google every name I make up just to make sure that no one else made it up first.