To Kill A Mockingbird Author In Copyright Feud
Harper Lee claims she was taken advantage of when the copyright of the modern American classic was transferred.
2:28pm, Saturday 04 May 2013
The author of To Kill A Mockingbird is suing her literary agent's son-in-law for allegedly taking advantage of her declining hearing and eyesight to secure the book's copyright.
Harper Lee has launched legal action in a federal court in Manhattan to re-secure the copyright and seek unspecified damages from Samuel Pinkus and the companies he apparently created.
She alleges Mr Pinkus failed to properly protect the copyright of the book after his father-in-law Eugene Winick became ill a decade ago.
Mr Winick had represented Ms Lee as a literary agent since the book was published in 1960 through the firm McIntosh and Otis.
The 87-year-old author claims Mr Pinkus took advantage of her declining health seven years ago to get her to assign the book's copyright to him and a company he controlled.
She has no memory of agreeing to relinquish her rights or signing any transfer agreement, according to court papers.
Ms Lee, who lives in Monroeville, Alabama, has asked the court to reassign any rights owned by Mr Pinkus and pay any royalties he has received since 2007 to her.
"The transfer of ownership of an author's copyright to her agent is incompatible with her agent's duty of loyalty; it is a gross example of self-dealing," the lawsuit says.
Mr Pinkus did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
To Kill A Mockingbird, the only novel MS Lee ever published, tells the story of two children growing up in a small southern US town.
It addresses racial injustice, as the children's lawyer father is selected to defend a black man accused of raping a white woman. The man is convicted despite his innocence.
The book won the Pulitzer for fiction and is widely studied in schools. The film version won three Academy Awards.
