In the big-money business of moviemaking, a good idea can be worth millions. So, you want to take the necessary steps to protect your work. Here are several ways you can do that:
• File for a copyright with the Library of Congress. This costs $30, but it’s good for a long time, even after you die. This gives you the most protection in a court trial, should anyone steal your script.
• Register it with the Writers Guild of America (WGA). You don’t have to be a member to register your material with them. For the WGAw, it’s $20 for non-members, and it’s good for five years (see: http://www.wga.org/subpage_register.aspx?id=1189). You might be able to register with the WGAe, though, where it’s $22 for ten years (see: https://www.wgaeast.org/script_registration/). Most writers do not protect their work until they have at least a first draft but know that you can protect your work with the WGA even at the treatment stage. They will hold it as a sealed document for you. In the event of a dispute, the WGA will provide evidence of your work and when you registered it with them. Protect your final work by registering it with the WGA. Although this might not be the final version of your screenplay that you go out with to sell, the idea is to protect it before everyone starts reading it. Never send out unprotected work. The $20 is well worth the protection of your original work.
• Mail a copy to yourself, certified, and never open it. This is called a poor man’s copyright but it works.
• Consider online registration. Check out some of these for price differences and length of protection:
http://dmoz.org/Society/Law/Services/Intellectual_Property/Copyright_Services/. Choose a registry that keeps track of who looks at your synopsis. Many registries require that the interested buyer email you for permission to read the script. Keep track of all correspondence.
• Give a copy to an attorney friend. This shouldn’t cost you anything, and it fixes your work in time in a homemade legal way. I don’t know if it’d hold up in court, but when I went through a trial about something else, my lawyer said that if I had something in writing, even a note to myself, and the opposing side didn’t have anything in writing about the same issue, then “my writing” has the status of a legal fact.
• In the United States, your work is copyrighted the minute you fix it in written form. You don’t need to do anything. It’s just that you have the right to claim monetary damages should somebody steal your script if you complete the official copyright process with the Library of Congress. If you protect your work in any other way, you have the right to make somebody stop stealing your work, but you can’t collect money damages.
• Keep a paper trail. When you give someone a copy of your actual screenplay or even a query or synopsis, write it down in a log. Keep the person’s name, production company or agency, date, etc. This “proves” that you shared your creative work with them. Be very careful about sending your screenplay to the anonymous e-mail address of an unnamed production company. Also, even if a production company requests full screenplays, send only a query first. Then if they request the script, you have a paper trail that they asked for it and you didn’t just send it off to them without it being requested.
• Try to get an agent or a manager. That provides one more layer of evidence that you wrote a certain screenplay and submitted it to a certain company.