Reuters informs that actor and director Woody Allen will be sued by Faulkner estate after using one of the American author’s lines in its 2011 movie “Midnight in Paris”. The Nobel Prize laureate once said that the past is never dead, but Faulkner’s heirs think the copyright to the phrase is still alive.

William Faulkner’s heirs are determined to do the author justice. They filed a lawsuit against Woody Allen because the director used one of the American writer’s lines in the 2011 movie “Midnight in Paris”. According to them, the quote that was used in the movie, namely, “The past is never dead” is protected by copyright laws, so Allen should have requested permission before using it in its film.

The documents read that Sony infringed on the copyright when actor Owen Wilson used a slightly modified version of the author’s quote from “Requiem for a Nun”. Instead of uttering the original line, the actor said “The past is not dead! Actually, it’s not even past.” Faulkner’s estate filed the lawsuit on Thursday, at the federal court in Oxford, Mississippi.

The 76-year-old actor is not the only one who will get sued by Faulkner’s relatives. They are also suing Northrop Grumman Corp. and The Washington Post Co. for using the author’s quotes in one of their newspaper ads. Their claims for the second lawsuit are similar to the first ones, that is, the writer’s heirs were disturbed that the quote used in the newspaper ad was modified without their permission. The second lawsuit was filed on Friday, in Jackson, Mississippi.