text: Harper Lee, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "To Kill a Mockingbird," filed a lawsuit Friday to re-secure the copyright to it. 
   
   The lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan seeks unspecified damages from the son-in-law of Lee's former literary agent and companies he allegedly created. 
   
   The lawsuit alleges the son-in-law, Samuel Pinkus, failed to properly protect the copyright of the book after his father-in-law, Eugene Winick _ who had represented Lee as a literary agent since the book was published in 1960 through the firm McIntosh and Otis _ became ill a decade ago. The 87-year-old author alleges Pinkus took advantage of her declining hearing and eyesight seven years ago to get her to assign the book's copyright to him and a company he controlled. 
   
   Lee, who lives in Monroeville, Alabama, has taken legal action to get the copyright reassigned but alleges Pinkus still received commissions. 
   
   "The transfer of ownership of an author's copyright to her agent is incompatible with her agent's duty of loyalty; it is a gross example of self-dealing," the lawsuit says. 
   
   The former agent's son-in-law didn't immediately return a call seeking comment. 
   
   "To Kill a Mockingbird" won the Pulitzer for fiction and is widely assigned in schools. The film version won three Academy Awards. ||||| Harper Lee, author of "To Kill A Mockingbird", smiles before receiving the 2007 Presidential Medal of Freedom in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 5, 2007. 
   
   Harper Lee, author of "To Kill A Mockingbird", smiles before receiving the 2007 Presidential Medal of Freedom in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 5, 2007. Close 
   
   Harper Lee, the 87-year-old author of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” sued her literary agent, claiming he took advantage of her age and infirmity to deprive her of royalties from the novel. 
   
   Lee, of Monroeville, Alabama, sued Samuel Pinkus, the agent, and others seeking to ensure her ownership of the copyright to the 1960 novel and to compel forfeiture of the agent’s commissions, according to a complaint filed yesterday in federal court in New York. 
   
   Lee, who has failing eyesight and hearing, was residing in an assisted-living facility in 2007 after suffering a stroke when she signed a document assigning her copyright to Pinkus’s company, according to the complaint. While the copyright was re- assigned to Lee last year after legal action and Pinkus was discharged as Lee’s agent, he was still receiving royalties from the novel as of this year, according to the complaint. 
   
   “Pinkus knew that Harper Lee was an elderly woman with physical infirmities that made it difficult for her to read and see,” Gloria Phares, Lee’s lawyer, said in the complaint. “Harper Lee had no idea she had assigned her copyright” to Pinkus’s company. 
   
   There was no immediate response yesterday to a message left on the voice-mail of Leigh Ann Winick of Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, a defendant in the suit and the wife of Pinkus, according to the complaint. She is listed as the president of Keystone Literary LLC, a defendant. 
   
   Also named as a defendant is Gerald Posner, identified as a New York lawyer and investigative journalist who incorporated one of Pinkus’s businesses. Posner didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail sent to his website yesterday seeking comment on the lawsuit. 
   
   Judgment, Arbitration 
   
   Lee’s literary agent for many years was McIntosh & Otis, according to the complaint. When its principal, Eugene Winick, became ill in 2002, his son-in-law, Pinkus, took over and diverted several McIntosh clients to a company he controlled, according to the complaint. McIntosh later won a judgment against Pinkus’s company in an arbitration over commissions he diverted from the firm, according to the complaint. 
   
   “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a story of racial injustice in the American South, won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was made into a film starring Gregory Peck, who won an Oscar for playing the lawyer Atticus Finch. It is Lee’s only published novel. The book has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. 
   
   The case is Lee v. Pinkus, 13-3000, U.S. District Court, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan). 
   
   To contact the reporter on this story: Don Jeffrey in New York at djeffrey1@bloomberg.net. 
   
   To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha in San Francisco at mhytha @bloomberg.net
target: – Atticus! Harper Lee has sued her former literary agent, claiming that he tricked her into signing over the rights and royalties of To Kill a Mockingbird, reports Reuters. The 87-year-old author alleges that Samuel Pinkus, the son-in-law of her late longtime agent, pulled a fast one on her while she was recovering from a stroke in 2007. “Pinkus knew that Harper Lee was an elderly woman with physical infirmities that made it difficult for her to read and see,” says the complaint filed in federal court yesterday. “Harper Lee had no idea she had assigned her copyright." The story gets a little convoluted from there. The AP says Lee is suing to "re-secure" the copyright to the 1960 novel, but Bloomberg reports that she actually got the copyright back last year in a separate legal action. It adds, however, that Pinkus was still receiving royalties through the legal arrangement he set up in 2007. The new suit demands that he forfeit all of his Mockingbird commissions since the deal. Pinkus himself has not responded publicly.