How do writers prevent others from stealing their ideas?

Question

How do you prevent people from stealing or copying your ideas - say if you were to release some writing such as stories, artlcles or gags ?

Answer 1

Well, I would first of all be careful where you release your work. And if you release it, say, in a magazine — then your work would be protected by copyright law. Anything you write or publish is yours by copyright. Anyone who steals this work is a plagiarizer, and violating copyrights.

Answer 2

you cant. they do have copyright laws to prevent plagiarism, and people must cite their work if they use your book. but you cant protect your ideas forever...

Answer 3

When the book is being published the company will make sure it gets copyrighted so no one can steal the entire story.

This is effective although people still steal ideas and claim them to be there own and sometimes they can be stopped but most of the time it can't be proven that they stole the idea from that particular book.

Answer 4

You will need to create a finished product.  Or, for ideas, poems, etc, you can create a compilation.  Once you have it organized and finalized you would register it with the UK Intellectual Property Office (or the US Copyright Office in the US).

All modern countries (EU, US, Japan, etc) respect the intellectual property of an artist regardless of the country in which you have the material protected.

Basically, the only thing that happens when you send this material to the Intellectual Property Office is that you receive a file number and they keep a copy of the material.  If at some time in the future you feel that someone has stolen your material, you would file a civil lawsuit against them and the court would pull the materials you have on file at the Intellectual Property office to see if you have indeed been ripped off.

Another method to protect yourself is to mail the material to yourself via Certified Mail (or whatever the equivalent is in the UK where the receiver has to sign for the package through the government mail system) and have them keep the package SEALED.  The postmark serves as proof of the date the material was sent and it can be opened in court as well.

Since ideas are so easily replicated (ie. you might not be the only person with a story about green aliens attacking earth) it is difficult to prove copyright infringment.  Basically, you have to be able to prove that the person actually had ACCESS to your material.  For instance, if a random Joe in Canada had an identical idea and story as you, but you had never met him and he had no way to "steal" the idea from you, then there's nothing you can do.

In short, copyright is moreso for a final product such as a book or a music album.  But, it can't hurt to go ahead and copyright your compilation of material, it's cheap and easy to do so.

Hope this helps.

Answer 5

It's true. You can't copyright an idea. You can copyright the expression of an idea, i.e. the words, but not just the general gist of something.

Ideally, you don't put your work out there in the public view before it's officially protected by copyright. I'm working from a US pov, however. I'm afraid I don't know the specifics of UK law.

Suffice it tosay, don't put anything out there unless you either get paid for it, or you're willing to let it go.

Answer 6

Writers do not need to do this. It is so difficult publishing your own stuff, that it would be stupid to try publishing somebody else's.

Besides, ideas do not sell - it's the WAY that they are written that gets publishers interested in stories.

That is why we have been reading the same old twelve ideas written in seven thousand and seven different ways, since books were invented.

Good luck - and don't worry. No one wants your ideas.