Yesterday an appeals court in Manhattan overturned a 2006 decision awarding the copyright interests for 10 of John Steinbeck's works to his closest heirs, his son and granddaughter.

BBC News reports, "Thomas Steinbeck and Blake Smyle were awarded the rights in 2006 after a lengthy court battle." The story continues, "But the appeals court ruled the lower court had misapplied copyright law."

It turns out that the rights had been more recently conveyed by Steinbeck's third wife to Penguin in 1994, and left with her estate to her descendants from a previous marriage when she died in 2003.

John Steinbeck died in 1968, having won a Pulitzer for The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and receiving the Nobel Prize for literature in 1962.