The defendants in the Tracy Wolff plagiarism case, which include author Tracy Wolff; Emily Sylvan Kim at Prospect Agency; Entangled Publishing and their distributor Macmillan; and Universal City Studios, which optioned the book, have filed a Motion of Reconsideration with the court, still trying to avoid a trial and bring the case to a close. The parties are being sued in the Southern District of New York for copyright infringement by writer Lynne Freeman, who alleges that Wolff’s Crave series bears “overwhelming and undeniable” similarities to Freeman’s unpublished manuscript Blue Moon Rising. Recently, the court dismissed some of the claims […]
Trump’s Lawyer Urges Court to Jumpstart Audiobook Case
Donald Trump’s lawyer Robert Garson sent two letters to to Judge Gardephe in the Southern District of New York to try to expedite his case against S&S and Bob Woodward over THE TRUMP TAPES audiobook. In the first letter on November 20, Garson urged Gardephe to schedule oral arguments — even though, as we reported recently, the judge has yet to rule on a motion to dismiss from last year and thus discovery has been stayed. He wrote, “The Court is aware that President Trump is soon due to be inaugurated as the 47th President of these United States of […]
People 12/18
Florida Court Urges School District To Settle In Book Banning Case
A federal judge in Florida has urged the Escambia County School Board to settle a book-banning case brought by PEN, PRH, and others, mindful that it has cost local taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. As of last September, the school board had already spent more than $440,000 on attorneys’ fees. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell II wrote in the footnote of a court order that a settlement, “should be particularly important to (the school board) because it is spending taxpayer money to defend this suit and it could end up having to pay all or part of Plaintiffs’ attorney’s […]
2024: The Year In Legal News
This year legal themes were almost all holdovers from the battles being fought in 2023. In one significant final chapter, the Association of American Publishers prevailed over the Internet Archive—again. In September, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the finding that held IA guilty of “wholesale and unauthorized copying” and the illegal files started coming down. That decision became final in December, as the deadline for IA to file a cert petition with the Supreme Court passed. The IA will now make an unspecified monetary judgment payment to the organization. Book bans were once again—and will likely continue to […]