MovieChat Forums > Letty Lynton (1932) Discussion > You can thank the Supreme Court.......

You can thank the Supreme Court.......




Letty Lynton has been unavailable since a US Federal court ruled on January 17, 1936 that the script used by MGM followed too closely the play Dishonored Lady (1930) by Edward Sheldon and Margaret Ayer Barnes without acquiring the rights to the play or giving credit. On July 28, 1939, the US Second Court of Appeals awarded one-fifth of the net of Letty Lynton to plaintiffs Sheldon and Ayer Barnes in their plagiarism action against MGM. This case was said to be the first copyright decision ever to direct the apportionment of profits on the relative basis as in patent suits where a patent has been appropriated.

On November 7, 1939, MGM petitioned the United States Supreme Court to overturn the Court of Appeals ruling, stating that the questions arising in the suit were predicated solely upon the copyright laws of the U.S., and not the patent laws. However, MGM did not prevail in this latter action, and the film is unavailable even to this day save for some bootlegged copies.

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Way to copy/paste content from Wikipedia. This is hardly the Supreme Court's fault. It it the fault of the writers who ripped off the playwrights. Thank those fools.

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