Perhaps all the fuss could have been avoided had Alice Randall chosen another name for her novel based on Gone With The Wind. As a title for a spin-off from the romantic American Civil War tale, The Wind Done Gone may not be the most appropriate.

Ms Randall, a black 41-year-old first-time novelist, calls her work "an antidote to a text that has hurt generations of African-Americans." That is not how the estate of Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone With The Wind, sees it. It sees it as a rip-off.

"She has basically taken a best-selling novel and pirated virtually all the major scenes and characters and is doing it to sell her own work," says Ralph Morrison, a lawyer for the estate.

A judge in a federal court in Atlanta is expected to rule today on an application for an injunction to prevent the publication of Randall's book next month. He must decide between the competing interests of copyright laws and the right to self-expression.

Ms Randall is supported by writers and artists such as the Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison, Harper Lee, John Berendt, the roots rocker Steve Earle and the civil war historian Shelby Foote.

Ms Randall calls her book a political parody. References to "monkeys" and "small intelligence" have made it difficult for blacks to warm to Gone With The Wind, though she says she enjoyed the book when she first read it when 12.

"Once upon a time in America, African-Americans were forbidden by law to read and write," she says. "It saddens me and breaks my heart that there are those who would try to set up obstacles for a black woman to tell her story."

The estate says Ms Randall has borrowed so heavily from the original that she has in effect produced a sequel, something Mitchell never wanted. "If I had written a sequel to Gone With The Wind, no-one in my family would speak to me," says Ms Randall. "I think Margaret Mitchell would love my novel."

Trouble with names is not unique to Ms Randall. The original working title in 1936 of Gone With The Wind was Bugles Sang True. Scarlett, the southern belle heroine of the story, began life as Pansy O'Hara. Either way, the Mitchell estate is unlikely to embrace the final line uttered by Clark Gable as Rhett Butler in the 1939 movie version: "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn."