Holden Caulfield Stays Young: Salinger Wins Copyright Suit

[WSJ Law Blog]

U.S. District Court judge Deborah Batts followed up on her temporary restraining order from last month, and permanently banned publication of an unauthorized sequel to J.D. Salinger’s uber-famous novel, Catcher in the Rye. Click here for the NYT article; here for the opinion; here and here for previous LB coverage of the case.

Judge Batts ruled that the novel, penned by an American living in Sweden who used the pseudonym J.D. California, did not fit into the fair use exception in copyright law because the book did not constitute a critical parody that “transformed” the original. The book imagines a grown up Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of the original, wandering the streets of New York after having escaped from a retirement home.

Wrote Batts:

To the extent Defendants contend that 60 Years and the character of Mr. C direct parodic comment or criticism at Catcher or Holden Caulfield, as opposed to Salinger himself, the Court finds such contentions to be post-hoc rationalizations employed through vague generalizations about the alleged naivety of the original, rather than reasonably perceivable parody.

“I am pretty blown away by the judge’s decision,” said California, ne Fredrik Colting, in an e-mail message to the NYT. “Call me an ignorant Swede, but the last thing I thought possible in the U.S. was that you banned books.” His lawyer, Edward Rosenthal, said they would appeal. The lawyer for Salinger, Davis Wright Tremaine’s Marcia Paul, declined to comment to the NYT.