Copyright infringement does not occur if the “copy” isn’t really a copy at all. In other words, he had to show the copying was illegal because of a “substantial similarity” between the two works. Is this outcome surprising? Isn’t it simply too coincidental that The Light Between Oceans and The Rootcutter could have so much in common? Well, maybe not…Ĭopyright law, in both the United States and the United Kingdom, only applies to the expression of ideas, and not the ideas themselves. For his lawsuit to succeed, Nobile needed to prove Watts made an unauthorised copy of his screenplay. The defendants (Watts, Dreamworks, Disney, and others) argued that Watts’ novel and Nobile’s screenplay “shared little beyond broad ideas, and a list of cherry-picked, often-misleading, incidental similarities.” The court agreed, and the case was dismissed in October 2017.
The third stillbirth coincides with a violent ocean storm and, after giving birth, the wife leaves a trail of blood on the floor.Three stillborn foetuses were memorialised by three simple graves with three small wooden crosses.At the core of both stories was a desperate childless couple longing for a baby.
Both The Rootcutter and The Light Between Oceans were set on a remote storm-swept islands.
In his January 2017 lawsuit, Nobile alleged that Watts copied key elements of his screenplay, The Rootcutter, which was written and registered with the Copyright Office in 2004. Nobile admits that while Watts made some “cosmetic changes” to his original story, the plot remained “strikingly similar.” His list of 22 similarities included: Dreamworks turned Watt’s novel into a film by the same name, released in 2016. The novel was on the New York Times’ Best Sellers list for over two years, with 23 million copies sold worldwide.
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