A Canadian author has sued NBC Universal and director Judd Apatow claiming they ripped off the premise of the hit movie "Knocked Up" from her book of the same name. CNN.com
I don't know the details of this case, but I am going to guess that this sort of thing happens fairly often. If you have a great idea, it is probably safe to assume that at least a dozen people have had the same great idea. Today I read David Anaxagoras' post about shelving a script upon the discovery of several similar scripts in development. After working on one of my scripts I discovered that there were at least four other writers within my small realm of knowledge working on projects with basically the same premise. Truly unique concepts are precious and few.
