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Banning literary sequels

Mediabistro’s Galley Cat brings attention to an ongoing legal battle over the intellectual property rights to Victor Hugo’s classic Les Misérables.

Pierre Hugo, the author’s great-great-grandson, is fighting to remove two sequels written by Francois Ceresa from bookstore shelves. Currently, literary works are considered public domain 70 years after the author’s death, but Hugo says the new works violate the “spirit” of his ancestor’s work. Ceresa’s lawyers say banning the novels will infringe on freedom of expression. After six years of legal wrangling, France’s highest appeals court will make a decision today.

Quillblog is sure that either way this decision goes down, J.K Rowling, who has been hinting that she will kill off Harry Potter to protect the character from literary borrowing, will be thinking ‘I told you so.’

By

January 30th, 2007

9:58 am

Category: Authors, Industry news

Tagged with: Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling