Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
A book is not an idea, but a concrete expression of that idea. "A boy discovers that he is a wizard and goes to a wizard school" is an idea which cannot be protected; "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" is a specific implementation of that idea which can be protected. It doesn't prevent anyone else from writing books about boy wizards, but it does prevent anyone from copying that specific, concrete implementation of the idea without the author's permission.
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Of course a book is an idea, it's just a very specific one. You're talking about what is protected by current laws, not what inherent ownership of an idea means. You don't think that two people could independently come up with the same specific idea? The odds are low, but there's nothing that would prevent it from happening.
Can two musicians write the exact same song, two authors write the exact same book, two inventors invent the exact same thing? Absolutely. Who owns it? Laws say that the first to register the patent/trademark/copyright would own it, but there's not an inherent right that would say one person would own it over another.