A battle is being waged over the copyright of the diary of Anne Frank.
According to European copyright law, work passes into the public domain 70 years after the author’s death, which, in the case of Anne Frank, is January 1 2016. This means that other publishers could produce versions of the famous diary about a young girl hiding from the Nazis in a secret annex of a house in Amsterdam.
However, the Anne Frank Fonds – the Swiss foundation that currently holds the copyright – has warned off anyone preparing to publish it next year and is trying to extend its lease on the diary by adding Anne's father, Otto Frank, as a co-author. Otto Frank died in 1980 so copyright in his name would persist until 2050.
According to the Fonds, Otto's work "editing, merging and trimming entries" legally makes him a co-author because they “in effect created readable books from Anne Frank’s original writings”.
