Plagiarism: The Dichotomy Between the Idea and the Expression of the Idea

Abstract

This article emerges from the idea that is not easy to determine the border between plagiarism and original creation. In principle, the plagiarism is an appropriation of the effort of others. The question, however, is whether it is always a fraud or sometimes it is inevitable of committing: the inspiration or reciprocal influence between two works break into the discussion. How to know what can or cannot be done, where is the line between the legitimate and the illegitimate? The objective here it was to determine the scope and limits of the figure of plagiarism. For this, certain linguistic ambiguities implicit in its definition were analyzed. The sources consulted helped to determine that, although the laws argue that the ideas themselves are not protectable, for practical purposes this reality is not so clear. The methodology used was descriptive; as an instrument was resorted to documentary research. As a result, it could be established, through the analysis of lookalikes, that ideas can be protected even in their abstract sense, namely, the primary ideas that are in the mind and not only in the form that it has adopted when expressing itself, since the idea is defined by its expression, the same idea can be expressed in different ways. It is concluded that, in reality, the absolute lack of protection of ideas is not an axiom, despite the latter constitutes one of the doctrinal principles of copyright, since the idea to be materialized and shared is linked to a mode of expression and indirectly protected by this. Intellectual property, in principle, does not protect artistic or creative techniques neither styles nor themes; but the protection of the work, although it tries to exclude what is exposed, namely: the idea, the method, the style and the technique, cannot always do it, incurring a contradiction that forgets that the creation is partly imitation.