Netflix sinks copyright suit over ‘Outer Banks’ series
Netflix and the creators of its " Outer Banks" television show have prevailed against an IP suit after a US federal court dismissed claims that the writers copied content from a novel about seafaring adventures.
The US District Court for the District of Georgia handed down its decision on Tuesday, May 25.
In December 2020, Kevin Wooten, author and copyright owner of the novel “Pennywise: The Hunt for Blackbeard’s Treasure!” sued Netflix for infringement and additional claims for attorney’s fees and punitive damages.
The court heard how Wooten’s novel, published in 2016, is a fictional adventure/mystery story set in the outer banks of North Carolina, where a group of young adults overcome dangerous obstacles in following clues to a hidden treasure recovered from a fabled shipwreck.
Alleged similar characteristics
In April 2020, Netflix released the first season of the television series “Outer Banks”, which also concerned the nautical adventures of young people.
According to the complaint, the co-creators of the series, Jonas and Josh Pate, said they were inspired to write the series based on adventure novels and by their time spent in North Carolina, the same city in which Wooten sold copies of his novel.
The complaint held that the novel and series share strikingly similar characteristics including: taking in the outer banks of North Carolina; featuring four protagonists where two characters have similar upbringings and absent parents, the third character is studious and throws away his chance at academia, and the fourth character is fiercely protective of the group.
Wooten further alleged that both works include antagonists consisting of a rich benefactor and a corrupt member of law enforcement and that both groups discover similar treasure at the bottom of the ocean, which is later stolen.
The complaint contended that the “series is strikingly similar to Wooten’s original and creative choice of words, facts, subject matter, structure, and core creative expression”.
But the court disagreed with these arguments, finding that many of Wooten’s purported similarities either do not exist or are “random similarities” that “could be found in very dissimilar works”.
Plots differ significantly
It further concluded that the plots of the novel and the film differ significantly, even though both involve shipwrecks and treasure hunts.
The court stated that “to analyse their plots at such a high level of abstraction would render every work involving a hunt for buried treasure susceptible to copyright infringement.
Wooten also failed to sway the court as the plot of the series was found to “bear no resemblance” to the religious narrative of the novel and the protagonists in the two works also share few similarities, “even when painted with the broadest brush”.
The works also vary greatly in their mood and pace, the court found. The plot of the novel is fast-paced, covering the characters’ journey to find Blackbeard’s chest and a quest across Europe to save their parents in just one week.
Outer Banks, on the other hand, takes place over the course of a summer and its pace develops more slowly. The mood of the series is also demonstrably darker than that of the novel as the characters use drugs, drink alcohol while underage, and flirt with teenage promiscuity, the court stated.
Based on these findings, the court concluded that the two works were not substantially similar as a matter of law and dismissed the suit.
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