Malcolm Gladwell's Something Borrowed in the New Yorker is a wonderful non-legal discussion of copyright and plagiarism.
It describes his search for understanding when key words in an article he wrote about a psychiatrist are used in a Tony Award nominated play involving a character based on that person. The real life psychiatrist threatens legal action against the playwright but Gladwell uses the incident to analyse his own feelings, the impact of the allegations of plagiarism on the playwright and whether there is a difference in "borrowing that is transformative and borrowing that is merely derivative".
In the course of his research he speaks to an expert on musicals and an expert on pop songs for comparisons in those fields.
A well-written stimulating personal piece of writing !
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