Swedish author sued by PRH, S&S for repurposing classic works

Swedish author Fredrik Colting and his partner are facing a legal complaint from publishers Penguin Random House (PRH) and Simon & Schuster (S&S), as well as the estates of Arthur C Clarke, Jack Kerouac, Truman Capote and Ernest Hemingway, for releasing illustrated children’s books based on those authors’ works, reports the New York Times.

The complaint, filed in a US federal district court, claims that Colting’s ‘KinderGuides’ series are ‘unauthorized derivative’ works that lift the plot, characters and settings from the books.

In 2009, the estate of J D Salinger sued Colting for writing an unauthorised sequel to The Catcher in the Rye.

‘Colting once again proceeds to brazenly infringe the rights of different authors, and the authors’ heirs and publishers, in complete disregard of copyright law,’ the complaint reads. ‘If defendants truly wish to introduce young children to the classics, there are literally thousands of public-domain works from which they could choose.’

Colting and his partner Melissa Medina began publishing their illustrated ‘KinderGuides’ titles, which are aimed at children aged six-to-12, through their company Moppet Books in 2016.

Category: International news