14 DAY TRIAL // In an unusual copyright case, a court in western Germany has ruled that Jesus Christ does not hold copyright for works published in his name, and that an American professor of psychiatry is actually the legal author of a book that she claimed included messages from God.
The book that caused so much controversy is called “A Course in Miracles” and is a collection of spiritual messages and teachings that the author Helen Schucman said an “inner voice” – which she identified as Jesus – dictated to her.
Last year, a German Christian group called the New Christian Endeavour Academy published extracts from “A Course in Miracles” on its website and argued that it was free to use text from the book without paying for it because Schucman had not considered herself the author of the work.
But, although the book was supposedly written under divine inspiration, it seems that the text is under copyright protection. So, the US-based Foundation for Inner Peace, which inherited copyright for the book after Schucman's death in 1981, decided to sue the German group.
During the trial, the defendant argued that Schucman played the role of assistant or typist in the process of creation of the work and had no personal creative contribution to the text.
“For many there is no doubt that Jesus of Nazareth is the author of the course and that copyright law therefore doesn't apply to his work,” the New Christian Endeavour Academy said, according to The Guardian.
However, the Foundation for Inner Peace disagreed, and judges at the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt (OLG) ruled on Wednesday that the law is on the foundation's side. They argued that divine inspiration is legally attributable to their human recipient, so this was a case of copyright infringement.
Helen Schucman began writing down the book with the help of William Thetford, also a psychologist, in the 1960s, and during her lifetime she stated that the text came directly to her from Jesus via “waking dreams.”
“A Course in Miracles” was originally published in 1975, and more than 2.5 million copies have since been printed and distributed worldwide. Certain quotes from the book, from sections such as the “Workbook for Students” and the “Manual for Teachers,” are in the public domain and can be quoted without authorization, but the rest of the text is subjected to copyright. The text has been translated into twenty-four languages.