Sony Sued Over William Faulkner Quote in 'Midnight in Paris'

The lawsuit claims a line spoken by actor Owen Wilson in the Woody Allen film infringes on the author's literary rights.

The copyright infringement suit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Mississippi claims Sony and others did not seek permission to use a quote spoken in the movie by Gil Pender (played by Owen Wilson). The dialogue describes his experiences with the line, “The past is not dead! Actually, it's not even past. You know who said that? Faulkner. And he was right. And I met him, too. I ran into him at a dinner party.”

The quote, notes the suit, is from a passage in Faulkner’s Requiem for a Nun, which reads: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

The suit charges: “The use of the infringing quote and of William Faulkner’s name in the infringing film is likely to cause confusion, to cause mistake, and/or to deceive the infringing film's viewers as to a perceived affiliation, connection or association between William Faulkner and his works, on the one hand, and Sony, on the other hand.”

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