Sony Pictures Wins 'Midnight in Paris' Lawsuit Over Faulkner Quote: "The past is never dead. It’s not even past."

Newsflash from your Hollywood Attorney:

 

Midnight in Paris features a protagonist played by Owen Wilson who travels to Paris and finds himself spending time with literary greats including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein.

In the film, Wilson describes his fantastic experiences. He says, “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.”

In Requiem for a Nun, Faulkner wrote, "The past is never dead. It’s not even past."

In his ruling, read here... http://www.scribd.com/doc/154578618/Faulkner-Requiem    the judge analyzes the various factors that comprise a fair use to see whether Sony's exploitation of Faulkner's passage was legitimate.

In terms of the purpose and character of the use, the judge notes "the copyrighted work is a serious piece of literature lifted for use in a speaking part in a movie comedy, as opposed to a printed portion of a novel printed in a newspaper, or a song’s melody sampled in another song. This transmogrification in medium tips this factor in favor of transformative, and thus, fair use."

As for the substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work, the Faulkner literary estate attempted to argue that the "Quote describes the essence of Requiem," and as such deserved some extra credit for its qualitative importance.

But the judge responds, "Qualitative importance to society of a nine-word quote is not the same as qualitative importance to the originating work as a whole. Moreover, it should go without saying that the quote at issue is of miniscule quantitative importance to the work as a whole. Thus, the court considers both the qualitative and quantitative analyses to tip in favor of fair use."

Read More.... http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/sony-pictures-wins-midnight-paris-588515

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