The Commerce Department’s Internet Policy Task Force issued a white paper on first sale (as well as remixes and statutory damages) that will find favor, or at least relief, among publishers, if not with libraries. The simple conclusion that is that paper advises leaving the first sale doctrine as is and not extending it to digital products, standing with the Copyright Office’s previous findings from way back in 2001. For now, they found that the marketplace is working well in using digital to extend new benefits and options to consumers and unlike the folks over at Justice, Commerce says, “we […]
Legal
People, Etc.
Fiona Kennedy is leaving her position as managing director and publisher of Orion Children’s “to pursue other interests.” The company confirms to the Bookseller that “a small number of roles” were eliminated over the last year following the consolidation of Hachette UK’s three children’s lines into a single unit. Also at Hachette UK, the company is closing their digital-only vintage crime imprint The Murder Room, and publisher Julia Silk will leave the company at the end of January after 10 years at Orion. In a statement Orion said, “After three years, it is clear that the market is not as buoyant as we’d anticipated […]
Supreme Court Will Consider Apple’s Appeal on February 19
When the Supreme Court next convenes for conference on February 19, one of the cases it will consider is Apple’s petition to have the high court hear its appeal of the guilty verdict in the ebook antitrust case. Apple had responded one more time, on January 15, to the Department of Justice’s end of year opposition to their appeal.
Authors Guild Asks Supreme Court to Review Google Books Ruling
As expected, and against heavy odds, the Authors Guild asked the Supreme Court to hear their appeal of the Google Books case. That request comes after sweeping defeats at the District Court and Appeals Court in the Second Circuit, where judges had little or no hesitation in declaring Google’s book scanning a “transformative” fair use. A related case against the HathiTrust — built on Google book scans — was dropped by the Guild after similar losses at the District and Appeals Court level. In their petition to the Supreme Court, attorneys for the Authors Guild position the case as in […]
Justice Department Replies to Apple’s Supreme Court Brief
On December 23, well ahead of the deadline, the Department of Justice filed its 33-page brief in opposition to Apple’s petition asking the Supreme Court the hear an appeal of their ebook antitrust case. The focus of the government’s rebuttal is to argue that finding Apple guilty on a per se basis, rather than applying the rule of reason, was applied correctly under antitrust law because Apple was found to have participated in a horizontal conspiracy with the publishers. They say Apple’s argument to use the rule of reason incorrectly posits that their publisher agreements were “vertical” contracts, contrary to the prior […]
2015: The Year in Lawsuits
For years now the future of publishing has been driven by litigation as much as innovation. While 2015 leaves a couple of key cases right near the edge of resolution — the biggest question is whether the Supreme Court will agree to hear Apple’s appeal of the ebook antitrust ruling (the odds of the Court taking any case are very low, though legal experts guess that if the justices take the case, they are likely to find for Apple) — we may be coming to the end of the “digital dispute decade,” at least in the US. But in time-warped Europe, market concentration […]