The legal questions raised by the Authors Guild in their lawsuit earlier this week have just begun, but any notion that the HathiTrust’s process for diligently seeking potential rightful owners of “orphan works” before providing the full text for download is sufficient has been easily punctured. Yesterday, after some “cursory research into some of the names on the list,” the Guild quickly found one rightful owner: J.R. Salamanca, a professor emeritus at the University of Maryland, actively represented by John White of the John White Literary Agency. LOST COUNTRY, his book listed as an orphan, was made into the Elvis […]
Legal
New Scanning Lawsuit Is Sent to Judge Chin
The Federal Court for the Southern District of New York has referred the new lawsuit by the Authors Guild and others against HathiTrust and associated universities to Judge Denny Chin “as possibly related” to the larger, long-running Google Books lawsuits. Which should put Judge Chin in an even testier mood at tomorrow’s hearing, when the parties address his deadline to get serious about a new settlement or prepare to litigate. In yesterday’s account, we erred in our inference regarding the new suit’s naming regents and trustees for the state universities; these are the normal corporate entities responsible for those institutions’ […]
Authors Organizations File Fresh Lawsuit Challenging Google Library Scans and Pending “Orphan Works” Access
The Authors Guild filed a fresh lawsuit yesterday in a New York Federal Court that stems from the Google Books library scanning project. In this case, they are suing the university consortium HathiTrust, as well as the regents and trustees of the University of Michigan, the University of California, the University of Wisconsin, Indiana University and Cornell. The Guild is joined by the Australian Society of Authors, UNEQ (a Quebec writers union), seven authors who are on the boards of those organizations, and author Fay Weldon. Like all the legal wrangling over the Google scanning, the case is complicated, and […]
Borders: Chief Account Officer Terminated, Next Jump Countersues
VP and chief accounting officer Glen Tomaszewski was terminated from his position on September 2, according to an SEC filing last week. The legal battle between Borders and marketing firm Next Jump is not over yet, despite last week’s agreement that Next Jump would take down a website that redirected Borders Rewards customers to its own rewards site, OO.com. Next Jump countered with a suit of its own, Reuters reports, saying Borders allowed Next Jump to transfer customer accounts to OO.com, but then accused the marketing firm of stealing the accounts as a pretext for recovering damages, in essence “duping” […]
Amazon Wins Tentative CA Sales Tax Reprieve, and Free Romney eBook; French Publishers Drop Suit Against Google
On Wednesday night Amazon and California state legislative leaders reached a tentative deal with respect to the state’s new online sales tax law. Under their agreement Amazon would not have to collect sales tax until September 2012, and in return the retailer would drop its referendum campaign to overturn the law, on which they have spent $5 million so far. “It’s a safe harbor for up to a year,” State Assemblyman Charles Calderon told the LAT of the agreement he helped strike. “If they can’t get Congress to act by next July, then they will start to collect the tax […]
Borders Asks For Six-Figure Executive Severance as Next Jump Agrees To Take Down Rewards Site
As Borders winds down business this week, it is contending with final bits of business in federal bankruptcy court. Late last week the company sought permission to pay $125,000 each in severance to former ceo Mike Edwards, former cfo Scott Henry, current evp of store operations (and acting cfo) Jim Frering and head of human resources Rosalind Thompson. Ten other executives already qualify for $125,000 severance payments, according to the filing. Both Edwards and Henry were “voluntarily terminated” on July 29 but Borders said in its motion that the two “continue to work actively on a non-compensated basis to assure […]