What are .backup files and how to remove them

backupbashpermission

I'm working on removing hidden files from a directory, but keep running into issues with .backup files. I keep getting permission denied notifications even when using sudo. I'm not sure where they came from since we don't use Spotlight or anything similar. Here's what I've been trying:

sudo find . -name *.backup -exec rm -r {} +
Password:
override rwxr-xr-x  medialab/staff for ./LT064A/2017_55_101_1ab__Black_History_Lost_Stolen_or_Strayed/2017_55_101_1ab__Black_History_Lost_Stolen_or_Strayed_R1/2017_55_101_1ab__Black_History_Lost_Stolen_or_Strayed_R1__Audio/.backup? y
rm: ./LT064A/2017_55_101_1ab__Black_History_Lost_Stolen_or_Strayed/2017_55_101_1ab__Black_History_Lost_Stolen_or_Strayed_R1/2017_55_101_1ab__Black_History_Lost_Stolen_or_Strayed_R1__Audio/.backup: Permission denied

here's the output for file ..../.backup:

 ≈:≈ find . -name *.backup -exec file {} + 
./LT064A/2017_55_101_1ab__Black_History_Lost_Stolen_or_Strayed/2017_55_101_1ab__Black_History_Lost_Stolen_or_Strayed_R1/2017_55_101_1ab__Black_History_Lost_Stolen_or_Strayed_R1__Audio/.backup: directory

Can anyone tell me what these files are and how I get rid of them? Normally I would just leave them, but I'm writing this directory to LTO tape and hidden files make the process really screwy.

It's not clear to me which application created the .backup files. The originals were created by our motion picture film scanning vendor, but the .backup files didn't exist when we received them. They showed up after an attempt to write them to LTO was abandoned after a power outage. We use a set of open source CLI tools for working with LTO called LTOpers. 

≈:≈ ls -al
total 16
drwxrwxrwx  1 medialab  staff   264 Jul 11 09:21 .
drwx------@ 1 medialab  staff   636 Jul 19 10:29 ..
-rw-rw-rw-@ 1 medialab  staff  6148 Jul 11 09:36 .DS_Store
drwxr-xr-x  1 medialab  staff   264 Jun 18 10:45 .backup
drwxrwxrwx  1 medialab  staff   264 Jul 11 09:36 LT064A

There doesn't seem to be anything in .backup, at least to my eyes: 

/Volumes/UtilitySAN/LTO_write/.backup
≈:≈ ls -al
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  1 medialab  staff  264 Jun 18 10:45 .
drwxrwxrwx  1 medialab  staff  264 Jul 11 09:21 ..

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