I have been thinking about this question for sometime and I thought it would be nice to open it for discussion.

The question is: If you create a puppet act that is inspired by another ventriloquist, do you consider it copying?

Let's take 2 fiticious examples (never done anything below, just purely made up by me):

1) After I watch Achmed the Dead Terrorist, I am inspired to create a skeleton puppet that likes to be a bully. His character is a bully, though he is all bones. The puppet act contains none of Jeff's script, the script is purely created by me.

2) After watching Kevin Johnson's show, I create a 2 bird puppet routines. The 2 puppets are totally different from Kevin's, but the idea is still the same, which is the birds love to contradict each other. Only one line in Kevin's show is used because it happens to be really fitting to the act itself.


Will you consider the above 2 examples copying? To which point do you think is copying?

It's an interesting question. Let me add these thoughts:-

- how many Mortimer Snerd type characters are out there?
- are all those vents with cheeky boy figures copying each other?