Bram Stoker's widow sued over Nosferatu, and a German court ordered every copy of the film destroyed

Stoker died with modest means, and Dracula's royalties were his widow Florence's main income^†. In 1922 the German company Prana Film released Nosferatu, an unauthorised adaptation of Dracula^†. Florence sued. In July 1925 a Berlin court ruled for her and ordered all prints and negatives handed over to be destroyed. Prana Film had gone bankrupt and paid her nothing. Copies had already spread outside Germany. She stopped the London premiere in 1925, but the film had its US premiere in 1929, with screenings in New York and Detroit. She spent years tracking down and destroying prints^†. The ruling was a rare early win for an author's estate against a foreign film adaptation^†, and it showed that a widow could enforce the copyright across borders. Nosferatu renamed Count Dracula as Count Orlok but kept the plot^†. Prints survived, and Nosferatu is now in the public domain and was remade in 2024^†. Florence licensed the stage play and the 1931 Universal film of Dracula^†.