The University of Michigan has taken the logical and appropriate step following the Authors Guild’s swift ability to show that the “due diligence” process for finding potential owners of supposed orphan works before treating those books as available for free distribution was fatally flawed. They said in a statement today, “The close and welcome scrutiny of the list of potential orphan works has revealed a number of errors, some of them serious. This tells us that our pilot process is flawed. “Having learned from our mistakes—we are, after all, an educational institution—we have already begun an examination of our procedures […]
Legal
Chin Approves Schedule for Discovery and Motions Moving to Google Books Trial
At today’s court hearing to update Judge Denny Chin, the parties to the Google Books case brought no dramatic reports of progress on a settlement (as widely expected), despite the judge’s warning the last time around to work out a deal or prepare to litigate. So Judge Chin followed through on his promise and scheduled a pathway to trial, albeit a slow one. Attorney Michael Boni, speaking for the Authors Guild only this time, said the authors organization remains in “active discussions” with Google about a settlement as part of a “parallel track” of preparing for litigation. Representatives of the […]
Authors Guild Locates HathiTrust “Orphan” Owner In Minutes, Questioning Entire Process
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 […]
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” […]