Judge Throws Out Salem Woman's Lawsuit Against 'Grey's Anatomy' Creator

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Stearns recently went on a Shonda Rhimes binge, watching all 13 episodes of one of the producer’s shows. While many of us would watch episode after episode of a Shondaland show willingly, Stearns did it for work.

Debra Feldman, a self-published author who lives in Salem, claimed Rhimes’ show violated copyright and stole several plot points from her series Overlap. Feldman particularly cited an unpublished manuscript for her upcoming novel The Red Tattoo as a source of the copyright.

Unfortunately for Judge Stearns, the contested show wasn’t one of Rhimes’s most popular like Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal and the recently debuted How to Get Away with Murder. It was her failed ABC drama, Off The Map, which was cancelled after only one season.

The medical drama featured six doctors who travelled to a South American jungle to find themselves and relearn their passion for medicine.

After watching all 13 episodes, Stearns ruled that Feldman was unable to make the claim that her book series was substantially similar to the show.

“It is evident that The Red Tattoo is not a jungle medical melodrama,” Stearns said in his judgement. “The Red Tattoo tells stories set in different times and places, involving characters who travel through time.”

Feldman’s characters briefly encounter a medical clinic in Bali, Indonesia, which the author claims is the inspiration for Off The Map’s South American clinic, the judgement states.

Though the two clinics are similar, Stearns said in the statement, “the generalized concept of an underequipped tropical clinic is not copyrightable.”

Feldman’s other claims of copyright, such as the inclusion of a motor scooter and treatment of a diabetic person, were also thrown out due to insufficient similarities.