Joan Is an Aspiring Screenwriter and a Business Student at Michigan

question 3

Multiple Choice

Joan is an aspiring screenwriter and a business student at Michigan University Business School to boot. Joan has just written a great new screenplay about the business school experience. Joan is worried about whether her screenplay will be protected if she sends it to all of the major California studios. Joan wrote "Copyright, 2010, Joan Jovial" on the title page. Is Joan protected by copyright law if a studio steals her plan and passes it off as the studio's own?

• A) Yes, copyrights arise automatically when the original work is created and fixed in a tangible medium.
• B) No, the copyright only protects Joan within the state in which the work was created i.e., Michigan).
• C) Yes, by correctly placing a copyright notice on the work, Joan has performed the act required to bring the work under the protection of the Copyright Act.
• D) No, Joan must obtain a written waiver from the studios acknowledging her copyright in the work before she sends them her unsolicited play; otherwise, she automatically loses whatever copyright protection the law would otherwise grant her.

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Definitions:

Antheridia

Male reproductive structures in ferns, mosses, and some algae, which produce and release sperm.

Archegonia

Egg-producing structures, as in the moss life cycle.

Gametophyte

Haploid generation of the alternation-of-generations life cycle of a plant; produces gametes that unite to form a diploid zygote.

Alternation of Generations

A reproductive cycle of certain plants and algae that involves a regular alternation between two distinct forms: the sexual phase (gametophyte) and the asexual phase (sporophyte).