OverDrive filed suit against OpenAI in a Northern Ohio Federal Court on Wednesday, alleging infringement of their trademark for the Sora brand, along with charges of unfair competition and deceptive trade practices. OverDrive’s Sora app for schools has been in use for over seven years, and was trademarked in 2022, while OpenAI’s Sora is their text-to-image creator first launched in December 2024. OverDrive writes in their complaint: “OpenAI’s recently launched AI text-to-video generation software app under the exact same name, Sora, using a confusingly similar icon, color palette, and visual identity, infringes OverDrive’s trademark rights and damages the integrity of […]
Archives for November 2025
Forthcoming: ‘Give Them Their Flowers’ By Octavia Spencer
Flatiron imprint Moment of Life will publish Octavia Spencer’s memoir GIVE THEM THEIR FLOWERS May 26, 2026. Kukuwa Fraser will edit. Spencer was represented by Mollie Glick at CAA in the deal. The publisher writes, “‘Give them their flowers while you can’ is something Octavia Spencer’s mother often told her, and now, it’s how she lives. In this captivating memoir, the Oscar-winning actor and producer recounts the seeds of the relationships that grew into the story of her life, from her tender teenage connection with Whoopi Goldberg to her sustaining friendships with Sandra Bullock, Melissa McCarthy, Allison Janney, Viola Davis, […]
Obituary: Jeanette Winter
Picture book author-illustrator Jeanette Winter, 86, died on November 7 in New York. The cause was heart and kidney failure. Winter created more than 65 books, particularly biographies and nonfiction picture books, including Follow the Drinking Gourd; The Librarian of Basra: A True Story from Iraq; Biblioburro: A True Story from Colombia; Nasreen’s Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan; and Our House Is on Fire: Greta Thunberg’s Call to Save the Planet. Longtime editor Allyn Johnston, vp & publisher of Beach Lane Books, said that Winter completed a manuscript about Johnston’s family home that was destroyed in the Los […]
Missouri Book Banning Law Struck Down
A Missouri Circuit Court overturned a state law that criminalized public and private school teachers and librarians for providing students books with what the state considered “sexually explicit material.” The judge called the law “unconstitutionally vague vague… and overbroad.” The law, which was enacted in 2022, resulted in hundreds of books being removed from school libraries. School staff members who were in violation could be fined $2000 or jailed for up to a year. “This is a real victory for all library professionals who are trained to select age-appropriate, developmentally appropriate material for students in both public and private schools,” […]