Caufield Meets Quixote
Last Thursday, a brief was filed with the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in the case of Salinger v. Colting. This lawsuit, alleging breach of copyright, has received a great deal of attention because the plaintiff is the reclusive author J.D. Salinger. He sued Swedish author Fredrik Colting in New York over the latter’s book 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, a novel in which one character is a 76 year old Holden Caufield. United States District Judge Deborah Batts rejected Colting’s argument that his use of the Holden Caufield character constituted a critical commentary on the Salinger novel The Catcher in the Rye, and therefore fell within the “fair use” exception to copyright infringement. She granted Salinger’s request for a preliminary injunction preventing the publication of the work in the United States. Salinger’s lawyers filed a brief asking the Second Circuit to uphold Judge Batts’ order on August 13.
Some observers of the case have focused on its unusual grant of the plaintiff’s request for an injunction — this is a rare instance of U.S. law allowing a prior restraint on publication. Other observers have debated the intersection of First Amendment rights and copyright protections implicated by the lawsuit. In contrast, when I heard about the case, my thoughts turned to Don Quixote.
A couple of weeks ago Amazon remotely deleted two e-books off of its customers’ Kindle readers—and in one of those too-good-to-be-true moments, the books were “1984” and “Animal Farm” by George Orwell.