ChatGPT came up with a 'Game of Thrones' sequel idea. Now, a judge is letting George RR Martin sue for copyright infringement.; Business Insider, October 28, 2025

  Jacob Shamsian, Business Insider; ChatGPT came up with a 'Game of Thrones' sequel idea. Now, a judge is letting George RR Martin sue for copyright infringement.

"When a federal judge decided to allow a sprawling class-action lawsuit against OpenAI to move forward, he read some "Game of Thrones" fan fiction.

In a court ruling Monday, US District Judge Sidney Stein said a ChatGPT-generated idea for a book in the still-unfinished "A Song of Ice and Fire" series by George R.R. Martin could have violated the author's copyright.

"A reasonable jury could find that the allegedly infringing outputs are substantially similar to plaintiffs' works," the judge said in the 18-page Manhattan federal court ruling."

Tolkien Estate Suing Author for LOTR Rip-Off; Kirkus, June 5, 2023

MICHAEL SCHAUB, Kirkus; Tolkien Estate Suing Author for LOTR Rip-Off

"J.R.R. Tolkien’s estate is suing an author who it claims ripped off the author’s Lord of the Ringsbooks, Bloomberg Law reports.

The Tolkien Trust filed suit against an author named Demetrious Polychron, who wrote a sequel to the author’s famous series called The Fellowship of the King. The title references The Fellowship of the Ring and The Return of the King, respectively the first and third installments of the Lord of the Rings trilogy."

Star Characters, Spun Anew, May Live Well More Than Twice; New York Times, 10/22/13

Sarah Lyall, New York Times; Star Characters, Spun Anew, May Live Well More Than Twice: "Authors’ estates that still hold copyright — in the case of Fleming, this will last until 2034, 70 years after his death — stand to make tidy profits from licensing the rights for sequels, and can also lure new readers to old franchises. “This is bringing a fresh, new interesting life to Bond,” said Corinne Turner, managing director of Ian Fleming Publications. It’s “about the heritage,” she said, not the money... As for Mr. McCall Smith’s plans to rework “Emma,” various commenters groused on the BBC Web site that if there was ever a case to be made for not tampering with perfection, this was it. Mr. McCall Smith, though, said his assignment was simply to use “Emma” as a starting point for his own imagination. Austen has developed into a cottage industry, with reimagined books and movies — “Clueless,” “The Jane Austen Book Club,” “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” to name a few — appearing all the time. And the publishing world is littered with the entrails of authorized sequels to Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With the Wind,” including Emma Tennant’s “Tara” (the book fell apart when she fell out with the Mitchell estate) and Alexandra Ripley’s “Scarlett,” a commercial success but a critical disaster."

Court saves Les Mis sequel novels, BBC News, 12/20/08

Via BBC News: Court saves Les Mis sequel novels:

"In 2001, novelist Francois Ceresa published the follow-ups to the acclaimed 19th-Century classic.

But Hugo's family objected to the books - Cosette and the Time of Illusions and Marius or The Fugitive - arguing they were an insult to the original work...

But the court ruled on Friday that Hugo's novel was in the public domain, meaning Ceresa was therefore free to invent a sequel."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/ukfs_news/hi/newsid_7790000/newsid_7793800/7793803.stm