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'To Kill a Mockingbird''s State Adaptation Rights Results In Ambiguity Battle
If more than one derivative-use agreement is entered into for the exploitation of rights in the underlying work, a key goal of contract drafters and negotiators is to specify and distinguish the rights being granted to each of the different parties in their agreements. A major consideration, of course, is to avoid disputes from an overlap of rights granted. A current dispute over contract language in grants to different parties for theatrical adaptations of the classic 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is an apt example of what can happen if contract language isn't specific enough, in this case resulting in an arbitrator inserting the term "non-first-class rights" into an award decision and leading Lee's estate to claim the arbitrator's use of the term was ambiguous.
In a 1969 agreement, Lee gave the Illinois-based Dramatic Publishing the "complete right throughout the world … [t]o lease the amateur acting rights in and to" her novel, while reserving "all rights not expressly granted to [Dramatic], including but not limited to the professional acting … rights." But in 2011, Lee informed Dramatic she was terminating the license grant under 17 U.S.C. §304(c), the rights recapture provision of the U.S. Copyright Act for pre-1978 works.
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