Fight for Seoul rights to Little Prince

Cathy Rose A. Garcia, Staff Reporter for the Korea Times, reports that the much-loved French classic The Little Prince, penned by French aviator-philosopher Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, is at the centre of a trade mark dispute. SOGEX (the Saint-Exupéry foundation) has told bookstores and publishing companies to stop selling copies of The Little Prince which contains the author's illustrations byand title design, maintaining that it owns the trade mark rights to the illustrations [the IPKat wonders, could this be copyright ...?] and the title design. The local publishing companies are however preparing to file a lawsuit to get the trade mark rights for The Little Prince annulled in Korea.

GLI Consulting, which acts as agent for SOGEX in Korea, signed last year a contract with a Korean stationery company, Art Deco 7321, giving it the exclusive rights to use the author's original illustrations. The Little Prince must be very popular in Korea, where it exists in many translationed editions (thanks to Birgit Clark for this item).

More on The Little Prince here
Patent on The Little Prince here
The Little Prince on Software Patents here
Full text here