Copyright

If a story is your original idea, then the copyright to it is by default yours.

However, copyright is a complex legal issue we cannot hope and don’t even want to explain properly here.

Each country has its own copyright laws. Also, copyright usually doesn’t apply until there is a pretty concrete manifestation of a “work”. It is easier to establish the copyright of the text of a novel than of the story the novel recounts. A story idea or even a fairly detailed outline may not qualify for legal copyright. But if you have a project in the form of a detailed outline which has a date to it, you have at least a way of asserting your moral rights to the intellectual property.  (more…)