Seventy years ago, Anne Frank was killed at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Her diary, known the world over, was published with a preface written by her father that the words contained within the pages were almost entirely her own.
Except now, in roughly six weeks on January 1, 2016, the copyright over the diary expires throughout most of Europe. Copyright law in Europe is based largely on when the author died.
Now, a Swiss foundation, the Anne Frank Fonds, which owns the copyright to Frank's diary, wants to change the authorship to claim that Oscar Frank, Anne's father, was a co-author--not just the editor. In doing so, the copyright would be extended until 2050, to coincide with the 70 year anniversary of Oscar Frank's death, who died in 1980.
Agnès Tricoire, a intellectual property rights lawyer in Paris tells the New York Times that the foundation is walking on shaky ground. "If you follow their arguments, it means that they have lied for years about the fact that it was only written by Anne Frank," says Tricoire.
It also opens up a wound between the foundation and the Anne Frank House Museum, which have had a frosty relationship over, in essence, who has more of a claim to Frank and her intellectual property. The museum has been working with historians on an exhibit for years regarding the diary for when the copyright ends--and, if the copyright is extended, that frosty relationship most assuredly will grow only colder.
To further make things chaotic, in 1991 there was a new edition of Frank's diary published by a different editor, Mirjam Pressler, who added upwards of 25% new material from the diary, as well as revised the original version. Pressler is still alive today, meaning the copyright on Pressler's extended version of the Anne Frank diary still won't reach the public domain until seventy years from Pressler's death, whenever that occurs.
Or, as the Times notes, Anne Frank once asked in her diary a simple question:
"Why do grown-ups quarrel so easily?"
