Re: Lolita's copyright

Last October I posted to the list a message about a suit charging an Italian author who had written a novel telling Lolita's story from the point of view of Lolita with copyright infringement. The message prompted some discussion about what is a derivative work, what is a transformative work, and how the extended copyright term might limit creativity.

To bring the story to a close, the NY Times reported on 17 June that the case had been settled out of court (see "Pact Reached on U.S. Edition of 'Lolita' Retelling"). Foxrock Inc., the publisher who took up the book after Farrar, Straus & Giroux in the face of the lawsuit decided to cancel plans to publish "Lo's Diary," and Nabokov's son, Dmitri, have reached an agreement to allow the book to be published in October. Under the agreement, Mr. Nabokov will write a preface and Ms. Pera will write an afterword to the book, and each will receive 5 percent of the royalties from the English-language version of the book.

The Times noted:

"Courts have established that parodies and critical essays are protected
uses of existing texts. A book that is clearly a sequel or a prequel to an existing book under copyright protection, on the other hand, would need permission to go forward. Less clear is a case like this one, in which Ms. Pera took Nabokov's work and completely reimagined it, telling the same story from the girl's point of view. At issue is whether a book is considered ''derivative,'' essentially piggybacking on an existing text, or ''transformative,'' taking something existing and turning it into an independent work with a new purpose, sensibility or mode of expression."

The paper added:

"The issue is extremely complicated for publishers because their
interests can cut both ways. On the one hand, they and their authors want protection for works they have already created. On the other, they benefit from as much artistic freedom as possible and the widest latitude for creating new works."

Peter B. Hirtle
pbh6[_at_]cornell.edu Received on Thu Jun 24 1999 - 13:05:00 GMT