In a lawsuit brought by J.D. Salinger, a federal court judge in New York has temporarily blocked publication of 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye after a day of “spirited arguments” about whether the book infringed on the copyright of Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. According to an Associated Press wire story by Larry Neumeister, U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts said she will take the arguments into advisement and “carefully study copyright law,” and is expected to issue a final ruling in 10 days as to “whether the book transforms Salinger’s original creation enough that it qualifies to be published as a ‘fair use’ of a copyrighted work.”

Salinger did not make an appearance in the courtroom.

Most of the arguing he missed, says Neumeister, was about whether his “most famous literary character, Holden Caufield, is himself entitled to copyright protection and whether stopping publication of what some publicity materials referred to as a sequel would amount to a book ban.”

But if her temporary temporary halt wasn’t indication enough, Judge Batts seemed to be leaning clearly in favor of Salinger over the claims of 60 Years Later author/publisher Fredrik Colting. Neumeister reports, “She said she read both novels and agreed with Salinger that the new book was substantially similar to his own, published in 1951. Although there was little legal precedent to find that a character in a book with no drawings or photographs of him could be copyrighted, Batts said she believed Caufield could be.” Said the judge, “It is difficult in fact to separate Holden Caulfield from the book.”

Meanwhile she also refuted one of Colting’s main arguments — that the book was a work of criticism of Salinger. When Colting’s attorney Edward Henry Rosenthal argued that the “effective” quality of that criticism was obvious, Batt told him she wasn’t having any difficulty judging whether the criticism was “effective.” Let me be clear,” she told Rosenthal. “I am having difficulty seeing that it exists” at all.

Salinger’s attorney Marcia Beth Paul, meanwhile, countered Rosenthal’s charge that stopping publication “is banning the book … a prior restraint that raises very serious First Amendment questions.” Paul pointed out that “94 percent of the book was told in Caufield’s voice and only 6 percent in Salinger’s voice.” She said, “This is a book about Holden Caulfield. It’s a sequel, plain and simple.”