LookAtVietnam – The plaintiff has failed to prove his case and the defendant has not fulfilled his responsibility as a co-author, the Ha Noi People’s Court ruled on Monday to settle a copyright dispute over a movie screenplay.

Mr Nguyen Thanh claimed he wrote the screenplay for the movie Biet Dong Sai Gon all by himself around 30 years ago.

Thanh claimed that Phuong, who was then a script editor at the Viet Nam Feature Film Studio (VFS), was not a co-author, thus could not benefit from any kind of royalties paid for the work.

He demanded Phuong and involved third parties that made the movie and printed the story, including the VFS, Sai Gon Giai Phong newspaper, the Thanh Hoa Publishing House and Long An’s Association of Arts, to pay him a total of VND7.4 billion (over US$400,000) in compensation.

He had a jewellery company calculate the amount for him, converting the original amount into taels of gold and taking into account interest rates and fluctuations of gold prices over the years.

Asked by the judge why he didn’t bring the case to court in the first place, Thanh said he was not conscious of how much profit the movie generated and that he wrote the script selflessly as a tribute to his comrades.

However, when he found that the movie was a huge hit that earned hundreds of billions of dong and its screen-play was serialised in a daily and printed in books, he decided to claim his dues, Thanh told the court.

Thanh added that he had never entered into any kind of contract with Phuong.

Writer Phuong presented evidence that he had been entrusted with the idea of a film about the special force of the liberation army during the American War by the VFS and it was he who undertook a fieldtrip to HCM City to examine materials for the story and meet living witnesses.

Phuong then enlisted Thanh’s help because of the latter’s intensive understanding of the special force and their activities.

Writer Le Phuong.

The two episodes went on to capture the imagination of the public, leading to the filming of two more episodes. This time, he wrote the whole script by himself but still shared with Thanh the royalties and mentioned him in the credits as the co-author, Phuong told the court.

He elaborated on the three steps it look to write the screenplay: conceiving the plot, preliminary writing and final editing, saying Thanh was in charge of only the second step.

Phuong said he had already paid one-third of the royalties he received from the studio to Thanh.

As for the printed publications of the screenplay, the concerned daily newspaper and publishers said they had all paid royalties to Phuong.

For his part, Phuong said that he had told Thanh about the publishers’ royalties but Thanh had failed to come to him for his share.

The jury returned a verdict that there was no evidence to establish Thanh’s sole copyrights over the screenplay, and that it has to be deemed the work of both writers.

They also concluded that since there was no foundation to determine the proportions of each writer’s contribution, the royalties must be halved between them.

This would entail Phuong having to pay Thanh slightly more than VND9 million US$500.

In the meantime, the third parties, which were also sued, were not held accountable since they had fulfilled their royalty responsibilities to writer Phuong and there being no contract signed between them and Thanh.

Not satisfied with the court’s ruling, Thanh said he would appeal to a higher court.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News