The producers of a brand new musical primarily based on Anne of Inexperienced Gables have filed a lawsuit towards the P.E.I.-based Anne of Inexperienced Gables Licensing Authority, claiming their work doesn’t infringe upon emblems held by the authority.
Within the lawsuit, filed Tuesday within the Southern District Courtroom of New York, the producers allege the Anne Authority is “overtly” making an attempt to increase the lifetime of and monetize an expired copyright for L.M. Montgomery’s well-known ebook set on Prince Edward Island.
The corporate is looking for a declaratory judgment stating that their play’s title “doesn’t infringe on any trademark or different mental property rights.”
The Anne Authority is collectively owned by the Province of P.E.I. and Montgomery’s heirs Ruth Macdonald and David Macdonald.
Anne With An E, LLC, is a New York-based manufacturing firm behind Anne of Inexperienced Gables: A New Musical. The play with a folk-rock flavour was first produced in July 2018, and in keeping with the lawsuit, is at the moment in growth for Broadway.
Anne of Inexperienced Gables, the novel, entered the general public area in 1983 in the US, and in 1992 in Canada. That occurs a sure size of time after an creator’s loss of life, and it often means the work turns into obtainable for adaptation with out charges having to be paid.
However the Anne of Inexperienced Gables Licensing Authority has a trademark on Anne of Inexperienced Gables, and has labored to manage and defend new representations of Anne, even because the ebook has entered the public area.
Within the New York lawsuit, nonetheless, the producers declare Anne is “as a lot within the public area as are Shakespeare’s performs.”
In response to court docket paperwork, producers filed the swimsuit after the licensing authority despatched a draft model of a trademark infringement criticism, threatening to file it in court docket if the play was not renamed. The deadline the authority gave for renaming the present was Monday, Feb. 20.
CBC Information reached out to the Anne Authority for touch upon Wednesday, however didn’t hear again.
Prince Edward Island’s Confederation Centre of the Arts is house to Canada’s long-running musical, primarily based on the Anne story. The centre lately introduced that Anne of Inexperienced Gables: The Musical will now be produced each second yr, beginning in 2024.
