Stephenie Meyer, "Twilight" Author, Sued Over Alleged Vampire Novel Rip-Off

TMZ:

The author of the "Twilight" series is being sued by a woman who claims the 4th installment is a rip-off of her work.

Jordan Scott claims in her lawsuit, filed today in federal court, that she began writing a novel "in the vampire genre" when she was just 15 -- back in 2003.

Read the whole story: TMZ

Comments

[Sundialsvc4]

Oh, c'mon. If you want to read a REAL "vampire tale," read Dracula. Still the best.

There's absolutely nothing original in the bookstores today. Just... "too damn much of it. WAY-Y-Y too damn much of it!" :-D

[CoOpEdAmerica]

From what I have seen of Twilight, it is just a much slower paced and less interesting rip off of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Joss Whedon should be suing both of these girls.

[deckard70]

Further coincidences: Both books begin on page 1.

Payday!

[MIMom]

Oh, please. This Scott women is just trying to get a pi.ece of the pie. Hopefully the ju.dge will laugh in her pa.thetic face.

[kappa08]

Didn't Anne Rice do this stuff already?....man you girls are so predictable.

[CitizenZoe]

She isn't the greatest writer of all time - she just happened to hit gold with the tweens and teens, and adults craving some teen melodrama. Personally, I thought the 4th book was horrible and a cop out, and seeing that there are some similarities between the two works is discouraging. However, in this specific genre a lot of people rip each other off. We'll see how it plays out. Copyright laws are a complex terrain.

[fabricnthreads]

This s tupid books and movies are all the same.

The people really being ripped off are the consumers.

The movie was laughable....the book I couldn't even read the first chapter.

I have a friend (45 years old) who thinks they are fantastic. We took our tween daughters to Twilight. She was entralled. My daughter thought it was the most ridiculous movie she had ever seen. I was just stunned by how moronic it was.

I read "Interview with a Vampire" by Anne Rice in 1977. Thought it was st upid, too.

There is obviously a market for the genre, but I see no value or quality there. Escapism, I guess.

I wWould much rather read non-fiction and politics and learn something.

There is obviously a large market for the genre, but I see no value in any of it.

[Prodigal Daughter]

Twilight is the most unimaginative piece of literature I have ever read. It reads like some teenage girl's journal filled with erotica. I mean, really? This is what has been hyped up for the past two years? It's been hailed as the next Harry Potter? Please. It doesn't even come close. Meyer steals from pretty much every vampire movie/TV show/piece of pop culture out there. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dracula, The Lost Boys, Underworld...

I could tolerate it if it wasn't everywhere around me. The teenyboppers really need to bone up on their literary taste.

[ZDuck]

Piss poor writing. As an avid reader it was hard to get through Book 1.

[MisterHands]

Incremental Plagiarism

I''ve said from day one this "mom " was a plagiarist... but the 30 somethings clinging to 90210 and Saved by the Bell wouldn't have it. Enjoy your "Sarah".

[Therealargument]

I have to say...for those of you blindly defending Myer, there is a link if you keep following the article to a page by page analysis of the two works. I have to say that there appears to be no possibility that they are that similar by coincidence. There are several paragraphs that go in sequence where Myer says the same thing as Scott did years before, only the wording is carefully changed. It's just too close to be coincidental. How do you write several paragraphs of material and hold it up next to a similar page and find that they are both saying the same thing, even in description? It's just not possible. I hope Scott wins her lawsuit and shame on Myer. I also hope it is exposed on a large scale. I wouldn't want someone to do to my writing what she did to Scott.

[JohnMayer]

No one example seems persuasive, but the weight of the whole document begins to convince the reader that there’s a very good chance the _Twilight_ author at least READ the earlier work. The test is “Substantial Similarity,” but no one really knows what that means. Back about 2005 the author of a play called _The Crew_ sued the producers of _The Truman Show_ for plagiary. The similarities were, I thought, compelling, and there was evidence that some of the Truman show folks had seen _The Crew_. But that lawsuit failed. On the other hand, Art Buchwald’s suit against _Coming to America_ and H.R. Pufnstuf’s suit against McDonald’s McDonaldland were successful.

It’s a very hard standard to meet, and I doubt the Nocturne author will succeed. But, based on the excerpts shown here, I think she’s the better writer.

[BlackJAC]

My interest in Stephanie Meyer's works begins and ends with the impure thoughts I've had about Kristen Stewart. It doesn't change the fact that Stephanie can run up the flag of Parallel Development to generate sufficient reasonable doubt in the matter. It also doesn't change the fact that Jordan Scott was the one who essentially started this whole debacle by putting her stuff on the Internet without appropriate legal protections such as registering her stuff with the Copyright Office or Writers' Guild.

[courtb]

I would disagree with your conclusion, actually. I read the Twilight series, although I'm not really a fan. I found the writing style of all four novels to be a bit juvenile. But after reading the link to the woman's complaint, I have to say, really?

The passages she compares, first of all, are not as similar as one would think. Wedding days, wedding nights, heck, even the thoughts a mother has the first time she sees her newborn baby...it's plagiarism because both female characters in the books say "He's/She's beautiful"? The fact that both bodies move when given CPR? It's plagiarism because both characters call their partners "love" in various places throughout the novel? If so, they must have plagiarized from me as I have been doing that for about 6 years now.

Look, when I read what you ad written and followed all the links, I was prepared to amazed at the similarities. Instead, I found them to be extremely generic and a bit absurd.

[sizogee]

While we've been reading this neo-Victorian drivel, the Swedish managed to make a film involving vampires called "Let The Right One In"

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/lat_den_ratte_komma_in/
http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/lettherightonein

98% positive ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, 82% on MetaCritic

If you want soft-core for 14 year olds, read Twilight. Otherwise, check this film out before the American version comes out.

[MAragon]

Not that I've read Meyer's books, I still haven't read The Odyssey for crying out loud, but I digress...sometimes similar ideas occur to different authors. I published a comedy on Lulu.com about Greek deities meddling - with good intentions - in the life of a young man and his estranged sweetheart. I published it in September on the website and arranged for global distribution in October of 2006. About 10 months later, in 2007, a British author Marie Phillips published her comedy via a big corporate publisher about Greek deities who aren't doing so well and the young couple whose lives they interfere with and the dubious consequences for all concerned. I bought a copy of it to make sure that it was not the exact same as my comedy. Fortunately, all we had in common was that our plots involved a young couple living in modern England and the Greek Gods. One of the key differences was that her gods/goddesses suffered from dwindling powers and lack of worship, and in my novel they very much have their powers and are actually there to help. I don't know if this is the case with these two writers, but sometimes it happens.

[huffponewbie]

The first sentence of the first book. "Twilight", is syntactically incorrect. THE FIRST SENTENCE.

[weatherwaxx]

What amuses me about this whole brouhaha is that Meyers is giving 10% of her $ to the Mormon Church. So they're against gay marriage, but OK with bloodsucking undead who stalk and seduce teenage girls? Or is it OK if the profit$ are big enough?

[smj32]

I haven't decided if I want to read this series or not. I guess I don't really understand the whole vampire craze. If I read it I will get it from the library because I don't want my money going to the LDS church. Thanks for the info.

[MissCupcake]

Bloodsucking undead who stalk and seduce teenage girls....Yep, sounds like Glenn Beck, another Mormon.

[ardethbay]

And here I thought a teenage girl was too old for most mormons.

[loki]

havent your realized that religion is hypocritically selective.