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Comment by oarla | Hacker News Reader

I have a more general question. Say I read a science fiction book which has descriptions of some futuristic technologies. I get inspired by it and spend lot of my time and energy becoming an expert in the required engineering and technologies and invent a machine/process to make that futuristic technology a reality. If I attempt to commercialize my work, can I get sued for copyright infringement by the author(s) of the science fiction book that originally described this technology?

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I believe the actual law is the clearest answer to your question:

US copyright law, Subject matter of copyright 102.(b) "In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work." (https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html)

Quite explicitly, copyright law doesn't grant the author any exclusive rights to the ideas expressed in the work, just on the particular creative expression.

In general there are copyrights, trademarks, design patents and utility patents, all protecting different things under different conditions. They are not interchangeable.

Patents protect the implementation of an idea, so you’d be fine.

There is no IP protection for the abstract idea of doing something, and that is as it should be.

Does that mean you could rewrite, say, Harry Potter from scratch without violating copyright?

Yes, but unless you change names it would be a trademark violation.

Normally that's the case even though at least one of those books was taken down based on (rather dubious imo) violation of rights on derivative works. It was never a verbatim rewrite nor a trademark violation. The Dutch court even proceeded to make a list of similar ideas between two books which I think is explicitly disallowed under the US version of the copyright law.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanya_Grotter

( Not only that, even what they say it's russian culture and folklore, it's based on polish history and tales: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Łysa_Góra )

Yes. There are numerous fantasy authors who make a living rewriting Lord of the Rings. Copyright protects the expression, not the ideas.

Several science fiction authors wrote about space rockets and satellites well before anyone actually built them in the 1950s.

i'm pretty sure this is allowed as Transformative Use (in the usa) (unless the science fiction book was full of patented inventions still covered by patent law then i think maybe you're no longer in the clear.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformative_use

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