James Bond & Glidrose

RCC (rkrcotton@att.net) said on alt.fan.james-bond from July 9, 1999 the following:

Years ago, when AFJB was quite a bit younger, one of the members took the time to write a fairly fun, fairly detailed Bond story and put it on the newsgroup. He put it online in parts and got a certain amount of attention on the group for it. When part two had been posted and part three promised, there was a slight delay. We waited to see what was going on and one day a very carefully worded post appeared on group from the author stating that the author had been contacted by Glidrose and informed that whereas fan fiction for certain other properties may be acceptable, fan fiction involving Glidrose intellectual property was illegal and would be prosecuted if he did not cease and desist. He apologized and I don't even remember if he remained on group afterwards. Anyone else? Needless to say, that ended the story and part three never appeared. Over the years since, other writers have appeared from time to time and they have supposedly received the same kind of notice. While some companies condone fan fiction, others, like Glidrose (unless they've changed their policy recently) do not. Whether you can write a Star Trek story or not is irrelevant if the Copyright holders decide to allow it. You can't write a Tarzan story without being almost immediately sued by the Burrough's Estate, which is famous in writing circles for even hunting down REFERENCES to their character in other films, stories, etc. James Bond, while being more lenient than Burroughs, is still a character held very close to the vest. And the obvious lesson to learn from this is that Glidrose knows this newsgroup exists and probably check in from time to time if they don't have someone monitor it for just this kind of thing. AFJB is a forum for the discussion of a character that is specifically their property, and they will and have taken steps to guard that property.

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