Three Point Shot – August 2018

Game (Perhaps) Over for Copyright Suit Involving Baseball Novel, "The Art of Fielding"

It's the college baseball championship game, ninth inning, two outs, 0-2 count, the team is down by one run, and the main character is at bat in a pinch-hitting role. And here's the pitch....the batter is hit by the ball and takes first base (an unexpected twist on the Mighty Casey striking out or the dramatic outcome in The Natural).

This climactic beaning scene appears in both Charles Green's ("Green" or "Plaintiff") work Bucky's 9th, a novel that the author unsuccessfully tried to place with various publishers, and in the best-selling 2011 novel The Art of Fielding ("TAOF"), by Chad Harbach ("Harbach"). Armed with a spreadsheet that outlined a host of other purported similarities between the two books, Green filed an idea theft lawsuit in September 2017 alleging Harbach misappropriated the content of Green's work and borrowed other plot and setting elements to create an