[Freedom2specul8]

Owning movie rights (law crawler)

[Hildy]

You can copyright a book and then sell THAT book exclusively and nobody could make a movie with the title of that book, but they can make a movie about it. Usually, to avoid any hassles, movie companies would rather have the permission of those involved, but they don't need it and many times go ahead and do what they want. You can't copyright a public event.