With Feeling Gravity's Pull done my I'm already well into planning my next book, one of the characters however was inspired by the work of someone else. So my question is is there actually any problem in using someone else's fictional character or product?

For example, say I decided to write a story about a boy and his daemon as inspired by Philip Pullman's would there be any problems with that? If the story isn't set in the same world doesn't have any of the same characters just the concept of daemon. Would that not be the same as say using a time machine, or laser rifle or mind meld or whatever? I remember Stephen King using Harry Potter snitchers in his Dark Tower series.

I know Roger has reclaimed a Dostoevsky character but was that only possible because the author is long dead? What if I say chose to give Harry Potter, Adam Dalgliesh or Tyler Duerden a walk on part in my book? If there were problems with explicitly using a character could you feasibly get away with implying that it was so and so without stating it?

Well certain characters are trademarked, usually those used in TV or movies or products, so, eg, you can't use Harry Potter or any Disney character.
Other characters, used soley in novels, are the copyright of the author (if they are still alive). But that doesn't mean you can't use a character-type from another novel, such as an MC with a daemon - Pullman is not the first to use such a device. If you go setting it in a mirror-image of Lara's Oxford, however, it becomes a piece of fan-fiction and you risk it being rejected by the publishers as being too derivative of Pullman's work.


- NaomiM

Thanks for that Naomi,

The character/product I intend to use is a robotic teddybear simply called Teddy, inspired by the bear from Artificial Intelligence (about the only thing worth remembering about that film).

It's not really a character as such and I guess robots and teddybears called Teddy have been used hundreds of times.