Happy ending for Swedish swastika tiger tale
Earlier this year, Swedish police confiscated 2,000 copies of “This is a Swedish Tiger,” a book by Jewish author Aron Flam about Swedish collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II.
They were judging the book by its cover, which featured the tiger image that the Swedish government used during the war to promote its campaign discouraging Swedes from jeopardizing Sweden’s neutral status. Sweden’s Emergency Preparedness Museum, which owns the copyright to the tiger image, had called foul on its unauthorized used by the book’s publisher. Its motive was likely something other than a strict copyright claim: On Flam’s cover, unlike in the government neutrality campaign, the tiger wears an armband with a black swastika.
On Friday, however, the Patent and Market Court of Stockholm District Court ruled that Flam did not violate the private museum’s copyrights because he used the symbol to parody it.
Flam said the ruling came as a “great relief.”
JTA