Fan-made fiction stories, or fanfiction for short, are very much rampant in today’s pop culture. Fanfiction, as the term implies, are stories written by fans which feature characters from a book, movie, comics, manga and the like. Since it is fanfiction, the possibilities are endless. The writers are not only limited to using the characters, they can even use the setting or parts of the plot of an original work and give it a different or personal twist. Through the internet, and websites such as fanfiction.net or Wattpad, the fanfics are uploaded for others to read and comment on. How then should intellectual property laws be applied as far as these “works” are concerned? Are they works that may be protected by a copyright? Or do these…show more content… May the “authors” exercise economic or moral rights over such works? Since there is the requirement of originality, then it would be easy to say that fanfictions can not be protected as original work. Does this mean that it cannot be subject to any protection? As previously discussed, fanfictions may be protected as derivative works. The Intellectual Property Code provides that derivative works shall be protected as new works. Hence, the work may be protected as long as it “shall not affect the force of any subsisting copyright upon the original works employed or any part thereof, or be construed to imply any right to such use of the original works, or to secure or extend copyright in such original works.” This means that the author of the derivative work receives protection over the parts he contributed, while the original creator has all the right over the original pre-existing work. Applying it to fanfictions, the original creator retains all the copyright over his story, characters, settings and all other elements. However, the author of the derivative work may likewise be given a right over his or her original plot or story. This is applicable if the work is an authorized derivative. What is the effect if the work is an unauthorized derivative? In the case of Anderson vs Stallone , Timothy Burton Anderson sued Sylvester Stallone and MGM for allegedly infringing the treatment he made for Rocky IV. Judge William D. Keller of the Central District of California ruled that Anderson's work was a derivative work and under their pertinent laws, derivative works are the exclusive privilege of the copyright holder. Thus in that case, since Anderson's work is unauthorized, no part of it can be given