Pierce Patterson

Zach Gregory
ENG 2100
4/4/2021

A Fine Line: The Difference between Inspiration and Plagiarism

Have you ever read a comic or a novel and notice some striking similarities to something
else? Or ever listened to a song and found out that it was sued due to copyright infringement? Or
even watched a movie that was inspired by a book with similar events and thematic elements?
There is serval types of literature and film that is in one way copied or inspired by a previous
work, one such example is the film Apocalypse Now! which is loosely inspired by the Joseph
Conrad novel A Heart of Darkness. While it is a nature part of film making or authorship to take
some ideas from a previous work and adept, expand, or criticize them in one’s own work, there is
a major difference between taking some elements of some one’s work, and outright plagiarism,
or taking large parts of someone else’s work, regardless of citation. While it is rare to see a piece
of media that had been directly copied from another author, with whole paragraphs copied word
for word, literary plagiarism has been a prevalent concern amongst the publishing world for
decades. Many authors have been open in their denouncement of plagiarism and those who profit
from it. While others debate on what can be considered plagiarism, how plagiarism should be
enforced, and even if there is even is an original idea at all. Given to properly explore ideas and
concepts it is important for a creator to take the ideas of another writer to either expand upon it
or to criticize it to forward a proper conversation it is of the opinion of this writer that it is a
necessity for copyrights and patents to be enforced so long as the new product properly expands
on an idea to give it a new meaning. Intellectual property must be protected to ensure that people
can expand on those ideas either through parody and inspiration or by placing those ideas in a
new context and providing a new perspective on it.

What is Plagiarism?
Before discussing examples of plagiarism, it is important to talk about what plagiarism is
in a literary context, and what are the affects it has on the original author and the plagiarist. Most
professors and teachers generally describe plagiarism as the willful copy of someone else’s
words or ideas without giving proper credit. This definition is correct, but very basic, it
generalizes plagiarism to simply copying what someone else said while changing some words to
synonyms or even a direct copy and paste. To satisfy the purpose of the essay, it is required to
define the word in a way that would be easy to apply to media outside of a book or paper. To that
end it is best to look at the ways other people who have professions on both academic and
authorial backgrounds define what plagiarism is and is not.
 While it is a different form of plagiarism that is addressed in the following article is not
the exact type of plagiarism that is discussed later in the paper, the article does include a good
basis on what plagiarism is in a more general sense, that will help illustrate what is plagiarism.
The article entitled “Plagiarism is not a Victimless Crime,” Adrian Bejan, a professor of
Mechanical engineering at Duke University, brings up the Latin root of the word, plagiarius
(roughly translating to kidnapper in Latin), to make the point that plagiarism is an exploitative
practice meant to take the ideas of an author to profit from their success or potential (1). The
comparison to kidnappers is used to invoke the sense of distress that an author may feel once he
is made aware of his work being copied. This comparison is on point if exaggerated, as the
plagiarism is exploitative by its very nature, especially if one is to pass off the work of others,
either in part or in whole, while not given the proper credit to the original.
One may not intend to plagiarize the work of someone else, but may do so
unintentionally, by lifting the ideas out of a sense of admiration of the work preventing them
from altering the final product. It is even stated by the Japanese American design agency,
Freshtrax, that original ideas are few and far between, and that most of everything is inspired by
or taken from something else, they later go on to argue that there are three important criteria to
avoid plagiarism “legally and ethically”. They argue that it is important to draw inspiration from
multiple sources, to not only protect oneself legally, but to incorporate the best ideas from those
sources to better distinguish it from the others. The second point is to not only take ideas from
different ideas, but to improve on those ideas or to add a commentary on them, that will help
make a work more of its own identity. The third and final piece of advice is to give credit to the
original source (Sugaya). The most important take away from the article is that it is important to
change or improve the ideas of others until those ideas more closely resemble yours. No one
expects you to reinvent the wheel, but you must transform other people’s ideas to either change
the context of the idea or to provide a counter argument or a reinforcement that provides the
audience with a new perspective on the original.
To properly define what plagiarism means for this paper, it needs to be at a minimum, the
copying of ideas or immutable aspects of one’s own work, that has not been properly been
credited, improved upon, or critiqued. Usually, due to a selfish desire to profit from the works of
others or laziness to put in effort to a work. Likewise, it is important to define inspiration as
dividing influence from a work of art or piece of non-fiction, without copying direct words or
unaltered or enhanced ideas from it, or with influence from other sources. These definitions will
be the primary standard that the rest of the paper will be following to determine whether the
following cases are examples of plagiarism or merely have been inspired by previous works and
stratify the criteria.

Plagiarism or Not?
The line between inspiration and out right plagiarism is a very difficult thing to decide
on, and even more contentious if a simple citation would be enough to absolve an author ow
reliant on a given work that if even an acknowledgement would matter. It is very common to see
authors and writers be inspired by the works of others, and sadly outright plagiarism is very
common to some degree as well, either because a writer has gained some much popularity and
influence that policing plagiarism would be a fruitless affair, or a plagiarized work has somehow
become more popular than the original. It is however very important to acknowledge, however,
that some elements of a given story that share minor or even thematic elements with a given
work is not proof of plagiarism. To the contrary, if the work is either puts those elements in a
different context or transforms the work to express a critique of the work, then the accusation of
plagiarism would be inappropriate. To better establish a concreate answer on what is plagiarism
and what is not, it would be best to look at a few examples of both plagiarism and what is merely
inspired.
While today Batman is considered one of the most iconic charters in fiction, back in 1939
(the year he first appeared in Detective Comics) if you were to ask anyone who has read that very
comic, then theirs is a chance that they may recognize some similarities between that story, and
an earlier story featuring a suspiciously familiar character. One may have read an early pulp
story of a rich playboy who similarly secretly fought crime at night. I am of course referring to
the character of The Shadow, who was around about nine years earlier as both a pulp protagonist
as well as one of the most successful radio serials of all time. Now a days, barely anybody
remembers The Shadow nor his radio show, but if this character never existed, we would have
the character of Batman, nor any of the influence that the character had in his 83 years of history.
While some may dismiss the allegation of plagiarism of the part of Bill Finger and Bob Kane
(The creators of Batman), by pointing to the differences between the modern-day interpretation
of Batman and The Shadow, back in the 30’s and 40’s, the differences between the character
were far fewer than today. According to Tony Tollin (a veteran of the industry who has worked
on serval Books for DC Comics), the first story of the Caped Crusader was directly copied from
a Shadow story called The Case of the Chemical Syndicate (Greenberger). Tollin argues, since
Bill Finger did not change much in the way of the plot from the original, the similarities of both
characters being incredibly rich vigilantes who go out to fight crime, and even the fact The
Shadow is compared to a bat in that very story, that Batman is a work of plagiarism
(Greenberger). While the modern interpretation of the character has been changed significantly
from his start, the character at his inception was far more like The Shadow to be anything other
than an example in copyright infringement. The plagiarized elements of Batman were even
acknowledged by Bill Finger, when he stated that he patterned the Batman stories after The
Shadow and Bob Kane mentioning The Shadow while explaining why earlier interpretations of
the character used guns (Greenberger). The ultimate result was that despite The Shadow, having
a huge audience in the 1940’s to the 60’s, due to the abundance of the radio and the popularity of
is radio show, Batman would become one of the most famous superheroes across the globe while
The Shadow, despite being the inspiration of the character has faded into obscurity, with the
radio becoming obsolete with the invention and distribution of the television and the 1960’s
Batman television series supplanting the popularity of The Shadow’s radio show. Despite the
creativity of the original creator of The Shadow, Walter B. Gibson, his creation has been
overshadowed by one that was directly copied only acknowledged after the statute of limitation
had expired, to avoid proper protection of his work. While this case is very obscure and only
known to a few people familiar to The Shadow or Batman’s earlier stories, the popularity of
Batman best illustrates why it is important for copyright and intellectual property to be protected.
Even through National Allied Publications (later DC Comics) was never sued by Street & Smith
Publications (later absorbed into Condé Nast), this case best demonstrates why copyright
protections are in place and are important, as it show just how easily an original idea can be
forgotten by a more successful property that had lifted a liberal amount of ideas and concepts for
at the expensive of the original.
While it is important to talk about cases where it is very likely that plagiarism took place,
it is also potent to talk about cases where the original merely inspired the newer property. Best
demonstrated by the Pixar film, Inside Out, and the allegation that it ripped off the concept of a
similar idea, named The Moodsters, that was presented by the studio by a child psychology
expert Denise Daniels. Her case argues that her the director had used her concept for the
animated film without making significant enough changes to her idea as well as some of the
characters from Inside Out were too like her character’s 7. Daniels would lose her case due to the
significant differences between her concept and the final film, namely the setting of Inside Out
being in a nine-year old’s head, and thus changing the context of the concept, as well as the
similarities between the characters were not enough to merit copyright protection (Jahner). The
main argument against her was the fact that it would require her to copyright a concept whether
than a tangible idea, and thus not be a properly warrant any protection for the property. While it
may not be very original, the film Inside Out makes enough changes to Denise Daniels concept
to fundamentally change her concept in a way that changes the message and adds a unique
perspective on it. As stated in the article, Inside Out took her concept, and went in another
direction with it, it made the personified emotions and changed the setting to the heads of people
to express a different idea then what the original concept had in mind. The primary reason why
the case was thrown out was due to the different ways on how each had a different idea and
different was of portraying those ideas. Even still, there are many things that must be explored to
gain a better view on the subject.
To tackle the subject in a more complete manner, it is important to touch on some more
minor cases of plagiarism. Both examples come from an article from the Freshtrax blog, written
by Nina Sugaya, although she talks about four examples, there are two examples that are most
relevant to the conversation for this paper. Specifically, the example of the classic “I heart NY”
design and the multiple copycats it inspired, and the case between the Ariel and Helvetica fonts.
The famous “I heart NY” design, was made by a Milton Glaser for the government of New York
city during the 1970’s where the city was struggling the hardest until the present, to boost the
tourism industry. Now it should be noted that neither him nor the city itself copyrighted the
design not the image, so they could not have sued even if they wanted to (Sugaya). Given the
information that the design is not officially copyrighted, one may can use the design freely with
no royalties’ or licensing required, so if that the case why is it important to talk about? The case
highlights, as the article suggests, to importance of protecting your own work when ever
possible. The article makes the argument that if this image were to have been copyrighted, then
the original creator would likely have been able to have been able to have made a great deal of
money due to the popularity and widespread use of the image for similar reasons, through
licensing out the image for people and organizations to use.
 The other important case the article touches on is the case between the Ariel and
Helvetica fonts, and why their where used. The Helvetica font was created in 1957 by Max
Miedinger while Ariel was created in 1982 by Robin Nicholas and Patricia Saunders. The two
were so similar in fact, that Microsoft used the Ariel font to avoid paying the licensing fee from
the earlier font (Sugaya). The article also shows a graph comparing the two fonts and how they
differ from each other, the graph points to very subtle differences between the two fonts, with
some letters having tails and more pronounced tails on the former, while the latter is less stylized
and smoother. The ariel font had stolen plagiarized the Helvetica font, there is only subtle
differences between the two fonts that few people would notice, made for the intention to avoid
paying the creators of the original font their due credit. The article goes on to include the two
cases where because of this case, companies like Netflix and Airbnb have started to create their
own fonts to help them stand out in advertising, an important thing to do for a company, and to
avoid paying royalties to other fonts they did not make (Sugaya). This case shows that even
things most people do not think twice using like a font for a paper or document, was created by
people, and does have a need to be copyrighted to protect those peoples work.
Another aspect of the debate is the topic of ghost writers and whether they should be
given proper credit for their work. While most writers, do not use ghost writers often if at all, this
becomes a more potent question for politicians or former politicians, as they are the ones who
use ghost writers, more often, for everything from a biography about them to even entire
speeches and declarations of war. To keep the paragraph relevant, the paper will focus on
whether ghost writers should be credited or instead of whether it is appropriate for a particular
person to hire a ghost writer or not. The article, written by Patricia Fusch, Lawrence Ness, Janet
Booker, and Gene Fusch, makes the claim that the people who hire ghost writers to write an
important address are taking credit for the work that other people have written for them. They
also claim that the practice of ghostwriting, “writing in the name of another publication under
another’s name (paraphrased from Landers, 2008),” is a form of plagiarism as well as dishonest.
The examples the cite are students at universities that had papers written about topics that they
were eventually going to find a career in, who are revealed to have passed of papers that some
else has written to pass of as their own. The paper also tells how people from the medical and
scientific fields to the offices as high as the United States Vice-President having important
papers be ghost written by an anonymous writer. The paper gives the commentary that this is
“problematic at best and disturbing at worst,” depending on the importance of the paper, and
whether it is something that should have been written by the person who originally conceived of
it, like a piece of legislation (Fusch, Ness, Fusch, Booker). This is a very valid concern for
writers to have especially for roles that require that a person be to be honest. The people who
commission ghost writers to handle important papers, are showing that they are not capable
enough to have that position or they are too lazy to efficiently carry it out. Ghost writing is like
copying someone else’s homework, benefiting from other people work.
The importance of understanding and identifying plagiarism cannot be overstated. Even
if it is something as inconsequential as a fictional character, an animated film, or even a simple
souvenir made to promote tourists for a city, but plagiarism can tell you a lot about a person. It
can tell you how reliable, honest, and qualified that person is. Plagiarism is a form of theft that
lets people steal the work of others for their own benefit at the original creator’s detriment. It
also lets the untalented and unqualified take the positions that more qualified and knowledgeable
people should have received. It is important to make a stand against plagiarism and copyright
infringement because it is important to hold people accountable for copying the ideas and work
of others especially those that we trust to be knowledgeable about their occupation. Anything
else would require the disregard of the creator’s rights and an open invitation for unqualified to
take the positions of the truly deserving.

Counter Argument
While it may seem to be an inoffensive position and for the most part is, there are people
who see varies issue with intellectual property and copyright and patent protections. One notably
critique is one put forward by Michele Boldrin and David Levine, entitled “The Case Against
Intellectual Property.” To briefly summarize the paper, Boldrin and Levine argue that the
copyright and patent laws, as they exist now are a hindrance on the current economic situation
and must be altered (Boldrin and Levine 1). It is also important to state that they are not opposed
to copyrights and patents in general, but instead draw attention to the laws as they exist now.
They argue that idea of downstream licensing gives the original creator a monopoly on his ideas,
that limit what the public can and cannot see and do with its creation. This will, as the authors
claim, led to the government attempting to enforce this though increasingly more expensive
means and will inevitably led to the original holder to hold a monopoly on what his idea and
suppress previous versions of that idea and control the narrative of that idea (Boldrin and Levine
3-5). The issue with this idea is that even if it is difficult to crack down on plagiarism, it is still
necessary to protect the rights of the creator’s copyright to if not prevent copyright plagiarism, to
minimize the damage to copyright holder. Another flaw within the augmentation is the suggest
that “[t]he same technology used to track ‘music freeloaders’ can be used to track individuals
who express unpopular opinions, (Boldrin and Levine 5).” The primary issue with this line of
argumentation is that fact that it relies on the slippery slope fallacy that this potential misstep will
lead to an increasingly worse result in a series of other missteps that led to a terrible result in the
future. The paper does include a section that criticizes a valid issue with patents, where people
are simply patenting things that are not actually innovations and instead basic things that most
people already have thought of to exploit the patent laws (Boldrin and Levine 5). This is a very
important thing to bring up, and a legitimate issue that needs to be resolved. While there are
major issues with the system of copyrights and patents, there are some necessary evils that must
be implemented to protect the rights of the creators who copyright their creations. This not only
discourages plagiarists, but also respects the rights of the copyright holders.

Conclusion
The line between plagiarism and inspiration is a very thin line with the need for creators
to become more active in the works they are influenced by. Many works have become known for
their universal values and themes that resonant with people from anywhere in the world at any
point in time. The primary objective of authors and artist is to explore ideas that have
significance in the lives of the audience, to ask questions that may be difficult to answer or
challenge the moral or philosophical perceptions of the audience. The main issue with plagiarism
is that it asks that same questions, with a similar or identical outcome, and this is not only a
cheap and lazy way to claim responsibility for someone else’s ideas but is a shallow retreading
on intellectual territory that says nothing new, does not contribute to any discussion, and
devalues the original as well as the rip-off. It will earn lead to a no-win situation where that very
idea will deprecate in value and fade from public thought, while the property and its perspective
will be underestimated and lose whatever made it special to begin with. The plagiarist will have
not only have attempted to swipe the credit from the original author but degrade the property as a
whole and lose out on the very fame he sought after. It is for that we have robust protections
against copyright infringement and IP theft. This

Works Cited

Jahner, K. (2021, February 16). ‘Inside Out’ Case Shows Gray Area Between Inspired, Swiped.
Retrieved from https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/pixar-inside-out-case-shows-gray-
area-between-inspired-swiped

Bejan, Adrian. "Plagiarism is not a Victimless Crime." ASEE Prism 28.7 (2019): 52-52.

Sugaya, N. (2020, December 11). Inspiration vs Plagiarism. How Does One Define and Defend
the Line? Retrieved from https://blog.btrax.com/inspiration-vs-plagiarism/

Fusch, Patricia I., et al. "The ethical implications of plagiarism and ghostwriting in an open
society." Journal of Social Change 9.1 (2017): 4.

Greenberger, R. (2007, June 24). The Case of the Chemical Syndicate. Retrieved March 21,
2021, from https://www.comicmix.com/2007/06/24/the-case-of-the-chemical-syndicate/

Boldrin, Michele, and David Levine. "The case against intellectual property." American
Economic Review 92.2 (2002): 209-212.
Landers, R. K. (2008, April 12). Books: Presidential words; in a speechifying season, a look at
how the writer’s job has changed. Wall Street Journal (Eastern edition), p. W8. Retrieved from
http://online.wsj.com/