Royalty Share ceo and attorney Bob Kohn is taking a new approach to asking the court to mitigate the effects of the ebook pricing settlements with the Department of Justice. He recently submitted Tunney Act comments on the new settlement pending with Penguin. This time, rather than asking the court to reject the settlement entirely, he suggests that they modify its provisions. Kohn asks that the restrictions on Penguin’s use of the agency model be removed. If the court agrees, he will seek the same modification for both the pending Macmillan settlement and the already approved settlements with Hachette, Harper […]
Legal
Supreme Court Rules Against Wiley In Overseas First Sale Case
In 6–3 decision, the Supreme Court overturned a lower court decision and sided with the defendant in John Wiley’s case against Supap Kirtsaeng, trying to block his resale inside the US of textbooks produced and sold overseas in less expensive editions. The high court agreed with Kirtsaeng that the first sale doctrine applies, even to goods produced overseas. Other content-focused industries had joined publishers in support for Wiley’s case. In the dissent, Justices Kennedy, Scalia and Ginsburg expressed concern that the Court was ignoring Congress’ intention of protecting “copyright owners against the unauthorized importation of low-priced, foreign-made copies of their copyrighted works.” Justice […]
Judge Sets October Trial Date in Bookseller DRM Lawsuit
New York Southern District Federal Judge Jed Rakoff is sticking to his plan for moving to trial quickly with the lawsuit filed by three booksellers against Amazon and the largest six publishing houses for Kindle DRM lock-in. After initially telling the parties “the court “requires that this case shall be ready for trial on August 12, 2013,” on Thursday Rakoff gave just a little–formalizing a schedule that would move the case towards an October trial. Earlier in the week Rakoff rejected a motion to stay discovery indefinitely. Judge Rakoff is giving the plaintiffs a whole week, until March 21, to […]
Legal: Yes, Of Course Apple’s CEO Will Testify…and More Suits Updated
Judge Cote ruled in a Wednesday morning teleconference hearing that Apple ceo Tim Cook must testify as part of the DOJ’s lawsuit against Apple in June. Reuters reported that Judge Cote cited the death of Steve Jobs as a key reason in ordering Cook’s deposition, which will last for a minimum of four hours. “Because of that loss, I think the government is entitled to take testimony from high-level executives within Apple about topics relevant to the government case,” she said. Apple had tried to insulate Cook from the trial, saying he was not named in the original antitrust complaint […]
More Objections On Closed Domain Names
Following the AAP’s objection to any issuance of closed–or essentially privately-operated–new internet domains such as .book, others have filed comments in opposition with ICANN as well. The AAP had objected specifically to Amazon’s filings–which also include .author and .read–because the company said it intends to operate the names on a closed basis “to protect its intellectual property rights” and “to support the business goals of Amazon.” Authors Guild president Scott Turow filed what appears to be a broader complaint to the idea of selling such domains to any private enterprise, regardless of whether they will open those domains to public registrations […]
AAP Objects to Amazon’s Application for Closed .Book Domain
As ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) solicits comments on applications for thousands of potential new “generic” domain names (from corporate names like .Bloomberg to regular words like .blog and .search), the AAP has objected to an application made by Amazon’s Luxmbourg subsidiary for the “.book” domain. Nine different companies applied for .book, including Google, a Bowker subsidiary and a company run by Proquest (and former Bowker) executive Annie Callahan. Reportedly, the application fee for the new domains was $185,000. The AAP objects specifically to the Amazon application but not the others, because Amazon said in their application […]