‘BREAKING DAWN’ LAWSUIT
Many of you have sent us links to the various media outlets who are reporting that Stephenie Meyer is being sued for plagiarism by Jordan Scott, who alleges that Meyer’s book Breaking Dawn contains a “striking and substantial similarity” to Scott’s book, “The Nocturne.”
According to TMZ, Scott’s claims are as follows:
– Both books contain a post-wedding sex scene
– Both books contain a scene about a woman who’s sick because she’s carrying a child with “evil powers”
– Both books contain a scene with the death of the main character’s wifeAnd according to Scott, the dialogue in all of these scenes — and more — is extremely similar.
Meyer’s reps refuted the claims, stating:
“The claim that ‘Breaking Dawn’ by Stephenie Meyer somehow infringes on an alleged book by someone named Jordan Scott is completely without merit. Neither Stephenie Meyer nor her representatives had any knowledge of this writer or her supposed book prior to this claim.”
(Thanks Leslie)
And in happy Breaking Dawn news, don’t forget: The special edition of Breaking Dawn (which comes complete with a Breaking Dawn concert series DVD, limited edition poster, and more) hits stands on Tuesday, August 4th. You can pre-order here through Amazon, here through Barnes & Noble, here through Borders, and just about anywhere else you can think of.
• MTV comments on the article here.
• The Hollywood Reporter discusses why the lawsuit won’t hold up well in court here.
EDIT: Our awesome friends over at the Twilight Lexicon have foiled the unjustly lawsuit by some interesting digging and research. Check out their post explaining why this claim is false here.
Related Articles
i think this scott guy is just jealus cuz the twilight saga is soooo popular! i love twilight! breaking dawn is my fav!
i have read quite a few vampire novels… regardless of when they are published, all have similarities to each other… i am in the middle of reading the last vampire by christopher pike & that one has a mother who dies giving birth to a baby who is a vampire…. (1994)
All of the vampire stories are based on centuries of legends and myths of vampires… they are all somewhat similar. I can’t say if the dialogue is the same, but i would imagine it could be similar if the situations are similar…
i searched for the book on barnes & noble, no results, and borders, nothing either… & amazon… nothing! is this even published???
I think that it’s not cool to place a law suit against a author for writing the final story of a book that has some of the same dialoge as another. Stephenie Meyer’s wrote Breaking Dawn based on how she wanted the book to be wrote.
If “The Nocturne” was published how come there are no records of it at any bookstores?? Vampichic, i searched it too, and guess what, NOTHING! I think Ms. Scott is just jealous, as Katie said. Me and my sister sit in Barnes & Noble and Libraries for hours, and i’ve never heard of this book before, EVER! Neither has my sister cause she tells me every time a new vampire book, show, or movie comes out. And i’ve never even heard of Ms. Scott. Who is she? For all we know she could of copied those scenes from Breaking Dawn!
This is so dumb. I read a few pages of Ms. Scott’s book, and not only is it unlike Breaking Dawn, it is also poorly written. Nice try at fame, Ms. Scott, but your story just doesn’t cut it.
What??? A post-wedding sex scene? How very, very unusual. She must have copied that because how is is possible that two people would’ve thought of that all by themselves…
Honeymoon sex? A woman having sickness from pregnancy? A man calls his beloved “love”? Absolutely groundbreaking. If this author sued every writer that ever used these plot devices, she could sue about 90% of romance novels/movies, and she’d probably have more money than the entire Western world’s GDP.
If she wins, I better jump on this bandwagon too. I’ll write a short supernatural romance story, post it on some obscure blog site, and then sue the entire world. I think I will file my lawsuit under the title: “Lyra N. vs. Every Writer in the World In Written History”. I like the sound of that.
@Mrs.Edward there above, you don’t have to be published to have copyright. I have read the excerpts and it is very similar, however if Meyer hasn’t copied the story it will sort itself out. However if she has, and there are strict guidelines that can prove this, she will have to give up rights to the story.
It is very very similar - go read the excerpts, everything is in the same order, wedding, honeymoon on island, pregnancy, even bellas dream!
W0W…..(how prolific huh?)
Wow, Allabout Edward, that is really weird that parts of both books are exactly a like. But i don’t see how Scott could sue Steph, do you? Most vampire love novels have the same scenes. Lyra N. is right, most authors will have the same plot in vampire love. So, why is Scott only sueing Meyer? Jealousy? Likely.
Just another failed author trying to cash in.
The thing about this is that Forever Dawn (Steph’s original Breaking Dawn two years before Twilight was even published) was copyrighted in 2003, which is a year before Scott’s was.
So, technically, Scott would’ve had to track Steph’s obscure printed copy down or hack into her computer and steal it, or the other way around. Neither of them are at fault, except Scott for a frivolous lawsuit and a claim that’s only basis is a few somewhat similar passages that were put in a certain order on the file so it looks like it had the same plot. (If you look at the red parts where it tells you the context of the scene, you’ll see that the page numbers they were taken from put the passages in a completely different order than they were ordered on the page.)
I think Jordan Scott just wants to steal some Twilight fame because her book was never even published. She’d put it chapter by chapter on her blog while she was still drafting it and there was no copyright. Therefore, even if Steph HAD stole it then, it wouldn’t have mattered because it wasn’t copyrighted.
The lawyers aren’t looking at the whole story.
Wow, Meg, up there. Are you or your parents lawyers or something? lol. But that’s soo true. I bet she wanted people to read her book and she knows TA has a LOT of people, (cuz evey true twilighter has an account here) and if she sued Steph, people would read the book to figure this whole lawsuit out.
this is just retarded.
no one has heard of “Jordan Scott” or “The Nocturne.” WTF?!
pshh. if she even exists, she’s just doing it to get attention for her book, or just herself. i HATE when people take advantage of twilight.
I meant to say the fourth book in his series titled “The Last Vampire 4: Phantom