It wasn't for using Skynet that he sued, though I personally think he should have done as the concept is not far off of the setting in "I Have No Mouth Yet I Must Scream".
No, what he sued for was that in several interviews, during the production of Terminator, Cameron openly admitted that he got the ideas for Terminator from two episodes of The Outer Limits that Harlan Ellison wrote (if I recall, "Soldier" and "Demon With a Glass Hand"). Harlan Ellison came across some of these interviews, as well as pointed at others by friends and acquaintances, and awaited contact from Cameron with regard to attribution; the film was released with no contact being made, at which point Ellison sicced his lawyers on the production. At first, Cameron apparently tried to bluff it out and claimed no prior inspiration, right up until the interviews were shown to the court; judgement was quickly made in Ellison's favour and his name now features in the credits, along with a nice payout.
There's an interview with Ellison on YouTube, where he admits that, if Cameron had come to him and asked, he would have been completely happy with just an "inspired by" credit with no money changing hands; he knows people might read his work and use it to create something new, he's happy with that as he knows that's how the human mind works, but you better damn well acknowledge him if you publish it.
If nothing else, I love Harlan for being the science adviser on "Babylon-5" and for giving Isaac Asimov so many funny stories to tell in his "Asimov Laughs" books.
No, what he sued for was that in several interviews, during the production of Terminator, Cameron openly admitted that he got the ideas for Terminator from two episodes of The Outer Limits that Harlan Ellison wrote (if I recall, "Soldier" and "Demon With a Glass Hand"). Harlan Ellison came across some of these interviews, as well as pointed at others by friends and acquaintances, and awaited contact from Cameron with regard to attribution; the film was released with no contact being made, at which point Ellison sicced his lawyers on the production. At first, Cameron apparently tried to bluff it out and claimed no prior inspiration, right up until the interviews were shown to the court; judgement was quickly made in Ellison's favour and his name now features in the credits, along with a nice payout.
There's an interview with Ellison on YouTube, where he admits that, if Cameron had come to him and asked, he would have been completely happy with just an "inspired by" credit with no money changing hands; he knows people might read his work and use it to create something new, he's happy with that as he knows that's how the human mind works, but you better damn well acknowledge him if you publish it.
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