Fredrik Colting is a Swedish author who is being sued for turning classics into children’s books after he infringed the copyright of several books including Breakfast at Tiffany’s and 2001 A Space Oddysey.
The lawsuit filed by Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster and the estates of Truman Capote, Jack Kerouac, Ernest Hemingway and Arthur C Clarke is directed at four books which Colting produced under the banner of Moppet Books and is not the first time that the author has fallen foul of copyright laws.
Taken to court in 2010 for publishing an unofficial sequel to The Catcher in the Rye Colting seems to have learned nothing from his earlier experience. Called 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye and penned under the pseudonym John David California and it was JD Salinger himself who successfully obtained a court order that banned Colting’s addition to the classic novel about teenage angst and alienation from ever being published.
The complaint pertaining to these four novels reads “The injury caused by defendants’ infringement is not purely monetary, as it also impacts the reputation of the Novels, their authors and, by extension, the plaintiff heirs and publishers,” continuing “Reviewers of the Infringing Works for The New York Times, Forbes, The Guardian and The Chicago Tribune have roundly criticized defendants’ expurgated editions of the Novels.”
Colting in his defence stated in an interview with the New York Times that the books he has produced aren’t infringing on copyright laws as the books “function as study guides as well as entertainment”.
The suit is demanding that all copies be recalled and profits along with damages be awarded to the plaintiffs.
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