Martin Luther King Estate Sues Cbs

The estate of Martin Luther King Jr. sued CBS on Tuesday, charging the network with copyright infringement for using part of King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech in a television documentary.

King’s estate claims CBS is trying to profit from copyrighted work, while the network said the slain civil rights leader’s heirs have no right to claim ownership of footage from one of the most pivotal speeches of the century.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, seeks to stop CBS from selling videocassette footage of “20th Century With Mike Wallace,” a documentary on the civil rights movement.

“You don’t own that speech and you can’t sell it,” said Phillip Jones, president of Intellectual Properties Management, the Atlanta firm that manages the King estate.

King delivered the speech during a civil rights march on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963, and, according to his estate, registered it with the U.S. copyright office shortly thereafter. King himself filed a lawsuit to prevent people from selling recorded copies, Jones said.

The speech at the Lincoln Memorial was made before an audience of 250,000 and is one of the most widely quoted from King’s career.