Lawsuits Over Copyright for To Kill a Mockingbird

Literary agent accused of duping author

In May, Harper Lee, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of To Kill a Mockingbird, filed a blockbuster lawsuit that alleged that her former literary agent Samuel Pinkus had "engaged in a scheme to dupe" her into assigning the valuable copyright to her book. According to Lee's lawsuit, Pinkus created shell companies and bank accounts to route the book's royalties before he was eventually pressured into assigning the copyright back to Lee.