Battle Wages Over Copyrights For Steinbeck
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
A son and a granddaughter of John Steinbeck will ask a federal appeals court in Manhattan today to take the rights to some of the author’s most famous novels, including “Of Mice and Men” and “The Grapes of Wrath,” from Penguin Group, a book publisher.
The dispute is part of a 25-year-old legal battle between Steinbeck’s descendants and his widow, Elaine, who died in 2003. John Steinbeck and Elaine did not have any children of their own. When Elaine died, her share of the copyrights went to her sisters, her daughter, and her grandchildren. Steinbeck’s two blood heirs — his son, Thomas, and a granddaughter, Blake Smyle, who is the daughter of Steinbeck’s younger son, John Steinbeck IV — are suing to try to recapture the copyrights to 10 titles published by the Penguin Group. The works, all from before 1938, are called Steinbeck’s “early works” in court papers.
The confusion over who owns the copyrights doesn’t come from any ambiguities in Steinbeck’s will, which clearly left the copyrights to Elaine. But under copyright law, his heirs had a chance to later terminate the contract with the publisher. The case will hinge on whether they gave up that right when Elaine renegotiated the contract at one point.
