On Thursday, literary agent Peter McGuigan filed suit on behalf of himself and the literary agency Foundry in New York Supreme Court against former business partner Yfat Reiss Gendell, charging breach of contract, conversion of funds, intentional fraud and fraudulent conveyance, negligent misrepresentation, and more. Alleging “criminal embezzlement,” the suit says that Gendell illegally transferred…
Legal
Bolton Permitted Discovery to Show Government Acted Unfairly
Former national security John Bolton can go forward with discovery to fight the government lawsuit claiming he violated nondisclosure agreements by publishing The Room Where It Happened. US District Judge Royce C. Lamberth denied the government’s motion for summary judgment, arguing that Bolton should be allowed to gather testimony and documents to prove his claim…
Hagens Berman Files Class Action Lawsuit Against Amazon Over eBook Monopoly
Following news of a longstanding investigation of Amazon’s control over the ebook market by the Connecticut Attorney General, class action law firm Hagens Berman sued Amazon in the US District Court of New York’s Southern District. They allege antitrust violations of the Sherman Act. The filing is both fascinating and bizarre, a kind of deja…
Connecticut Has Been Investigating Amazon’s Publisher eBook Contracts — For Some Time
A decade after the ambitious Connecticut Attorney General (now US senator Richard Blumenthal) joined the ambitious Texas Attorney General (now Texas governor Greg Abbott) in helping to provide Amazon with a government-enhanced strangehold on the ebook market, a new Connecticut AG has been investigating Amazon for a while. The office of AG William Tong “has…
Legal: A Victory for Copyright Small Claims, DMCA News, and a Netflix Settlement
Bundled into the big appropriations bill that Congress just passed is the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement (CASE) Act, which has had the support from many in publishing for a number of years. The act establishes a Copyright Claims Board within the U.S. Copyright Office, so that creators can fight copyright violations without needing to…
Corporate: Netflix Settles with Chooseco, and More
Chooseco’s lawsuit against Netflix over their interactive film Black Mirror: Bandersnatch has been settled, as the parties informed US District Court Judge William Sessions III on Monday at a status conference. The terms remain confidential, but “the parties did tell the judge of one slightly unusual condition — the judge’s Feb. 2020 opinion denying Netflix’s dismissal…
