Why don&#39;t screenwriters get sued more often?
<p>Musicians get sued a lot for stealing other musicians work, but movie writers also riff on a lot of the same ideas of one another, yet I never hear of screen writers/directors getting sued. Why is that?</p>

<p>One reason could be because of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sc%C3%A8nes_%C3%A0_faire" rel="nofollow">scènes à faire</a> doctrine. Many of the things you notice as similarities are not infringement.</p>

<p>I don't know the counts of lawsuits for music infringement vs screenwriting infringement. There may just be more songs than screenplays. Screenwriters/producers do get sued, though. See <a href="http://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/8013/index.do" rel="nofollow">Cinar Corporation v. Robinson 2012 SCC 25</a>.</p>

<p>There are many more possible screen ideas than song ideas. At some point, it is inevitable that songs will sound similar to each other.</p>

<p>For example, there are only 12 musical notes in total and only 7 of those notes (called a <strong><em>scale</em></strong>) sound good together at any one time. Most melodies only use notes from the scale from which it's constructed. Accordingly, there are only 3 distinct (harmonic) chords (combinations of 3 or more notes from a scale).</p>

<p>If you consider how many songs that are being written using the same 12 or 7 tones, it is simply a mathematical / combinatorial fact that many songs will eventually sound similar to each other.</p>

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