In the movie 'Midnight in Paris', Gil Pender (played by Owen Wilson) says, "The past is not dead! Actually, it's not even past. You know who said that? Faulkner. And he was right. And I met him, too. I ran into him at a dinner party."
Sony Pictures Classics and a group of unnamed movie exhibitors have been sued by the owners of the rights to the literary works of the late William Faulkner because Sony used those 9 words "without permission".
The quote is from a passage in Faulkner's Requiem for a Nun, which reads: "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
And that, my friends, is what some delusional lawyer feels is worth filing a lawsuit over. Those 9 words are off-limits to mere mortals, because William Faulkner said them first!
The suit charges that "The use of the infringing quote and of William Faulkner's name in the infringing film is likely to cause confusion, to cause mistake, and/or to deceive the infringing film's viewers as to a perceived affiliation, connection or association between William Faulkner and his works, on the one hand, and Sony, on the other hand."
Yeah, I am sooooooooo likely to confuse William Faulkner, a writer and Nobel Prize laureate who died in 1962, with Sony Corporation, a maker of electronic gadgets. Why, I can hardly tell 'em apart!
So f*ck you, Faulkner Literary Rights LLC. Come and sue me for reprinting those words without paying you for them first.
