The old standard used to be that you couldn't copyright an idea, only the expression of an idea. So while I can't create a series about a school-aged wizard called Harry and his fight against the Dark Lord in a wizard school called Hogwarts, there's nothing stopping me from creating a series about a school of wizardry with some plucky young students who defeat evil magic by being brave, loyal, and generally Doing The Right Thing. This is something that artists of all kinds of survived on since the creation of copyright - similarity is fine as long as the actual works were created independently and originally.

That all just went out the window with one disastrous (and I feel the urge to say: idiotic) ruling by a judge in the UK: that works that are similar do infringe on copyright, even if the creation is wholly independent.

There was an original photograph of an iconic red london bus against a greyed-out london landmark. And then, someone else went and took another, very similar photograph at the same landmark, from a different angle, and greyed out the background in the same way. Same concept, two (similar) executions. The judge ruled that the second photograph was infringing the first as a derivative work, despite evidence presented that photos of red london buses on greyed out london landmarks are actually extremely common and worse, despite the fact that copyright is not about concept.

Taking a photo of a red bus at a london landmark and greying out everything but the bus - that's an idea. Other people can take as many photos of red buses with greyed out backgrounds as they want without infringing your copyright - what they can't do  is take your original photograph and (for example) invert the colours. That would be a derivative work. A similar execution of the same concept is not violating copyright.

Copyright is on the expression of a concept - the words you write, the picture you paint, the photograph you take, the notes you compose. A patent is what protects an idea - a method of doing something, for example. Copyright is automatic, patents have to be applied for, with fees and assessment of the validity of the patent taking many months. And there's a reason for that - because we've always recognised that awarding ownership of an idea is very dangerous - and in the case of culture and art, downright idiotic. Take this to its logical conclusion, and we can't have any more murder mysteries, romances, thrillers, political satires, science fiction, literature, or anything else that has already been done in some way, shape or form, which is pretty much everything, because it will violate somebody's copyright somewhere. Cory Doctorow has more to say on that notion.

I'm not kidding. If this is upheld, the legal ramifications are pretty much: no more art.