Protecting Your Right to Screenplays - A Guide

The following are few tips that will be of significant benefit to those new screenwriters who do not know how to protect their screenplay rights.

Protection over your intellectual property becomes of utmost importance once you have stepped into the field of screenplay writing on commercial basis. It is not difficult for anyone to place its story into a format suitable for the screen, but it is of utmost importance that one should protect this screenwriting work as a property in such a way that no third party could manipulate and use its. Your original screenwriting work can be stolen in numerous ways and you cannot do anything to those unscrupulous elements. Some tips are given here that will be quite helpful to those who are commencing their career as screenwriters to protect their screenplay work.

Maintain Records

As a first step, you must take care of maintaining records of the progress of your screenplay works. By doing this, you can ensure that you are involved at every step whenever it undergoes inspection. To do this, you can create separate files and save them from time to time in addition to the master file. Thus, you can maintain and show various sections separately as smaller parts of the progress. This is particularly applicable on initial edits and drafts. To prove your claim of screenwriting, the dates saved on the files thus created will help a lot. In order to protect these files from any computer virus or defect, you can prefer to save these on CD/DVD or other external hard drive.

Role of Writer's Guild of America in Copyright

After completing your screenplay work you may prefer to protect it. There are two sources, viz., the United States Copy Right Office and the Writer's Guild of America, where you can register your screenwriting work and get protection. Registration with these agencies involves some expenses but it helps to establish your screenplay work as a unique piece whenever needed to support your claim. All elements of your story or the themes in your screenplay cannot, however, be protected by them. If you are going to show your initial drafts to critics and professionals, it would be a better option to register your first draft itself. You must understand that if you copy-write your script, it gives you adequate control on the security of your work and you can protect it in a detailed manner and for longer span of time.

Take Some Precautions While Sending Your Screenplay Work

Whenever you are exhibiting your screenplay, particularly, in commercial forums, you can make sure that it is done every time only after being requested. You must never send your work to any agency or producer of your own as it will leave your screenwriting in a great risk of being stolen. Therefore, before sending your screenplay takes some precautions to protect it by way of sending query in writing or making some kinds of contacts beforehand.

Sources:
www.sellascript.com/source/qaforum.cfm
www.filmmaking.net/faq/answers/faq99.asp