Back story:

Last August I had wondered if there is such a thing as remakes in literature. I stumbled on the the case of Régine Deforges rewriting Gone with the Wind.

In my previous posts (one where I quote Kierkegaard saying that Faust is a reproduction of Don Juan and one which contends that horror fiction and erotic fiction do not need great writers to perpetuate themselves) I tried to prove a theory by Georges Bataille which says: “If, as it appears to me, a book is communication, then the author is only a link among many readings.” These positions are summarized at my intertextual page.

Today I stumble across a document which parallels the 19th century social adventures saga novel to 21st century software. The page states that today it would be impossible/forbidden to write such novels if they had been patented in the 19th century the way much software is patented now:

“… if Eugène Sue, with Les Mystères de Paris and Le Juif Errant, Alexandre Dumas, with Le Comte Monte Cristo, or Honoré de Balzac, with Splendeur et Misère des Courtisanes, had patented [the social adventures saga novel] being based for example on very broad claims like those:

• • Communication process between a writer and a reader characterized in that the narration runs on numerous pages.
  • […] in that its structure sometimes seems to be like a fugue, even like improvisation.
  • […] in that the intrigue is articulated around the confrontation of some characters setting traps in turn.
  • […] in that the narration has the ambition to describe all the layers of the society and also its hidden wheels, leading to topics of conspiracy, leading also to social exoticism. —http://wiki.ffii.org/LiteraryPatentsEn