As previewed earlier in the month, the European Union announced the final “commitments” made by Amazon to avoid further enforcement action, including fines. As indicated earlier, within the EU Amazon will make the Buy Box more competitive, allow third-party merchants to participate in Prime while using outside logistics providers, and block Amazon from using internal data to compete with third-party merchants. Specifically, the EU states: Regarding data use, Amazon will not “use non-public data relating to, or derived from, the independent sellers’ activities on its marketplace, for its retail business. This applies to both Amazon’s automated tools and employees that […]
Legal
Pallante Defends the Broad Protection and Innovation of Exclusive Rights Under Copyright
On Tuesday night, AAP ceo Maria Pallante delivered the Copyright Society’s Donald C. Brace lecture (named for the publisher, and business partner of Alfred Harcourt) at Fordham University Law School. She spoke on “the art and innovation of exclusive rights,” declaring, “To say that divisibility is a shining feature of copyright law would be an understatement…. That exclusive rights are divisible under the law amplifies their constitutional purpose, compounds their potential, and solidifies the underlying architecture of the Copyright Act.” Appropriate to a year in which AAP publishers prevailed against an unconstitutional Maryland law trying to regulate sales of digital […]
Agent Vigliano Sues Former Clients Chip and Joanna Gaines
Literary agency Vigliano Associates filed suit in a New York court alleging breach of contract against authors Chip and Joanna Gaines, as well as their business enterprises and their current management, United Talent Agency. Vigliano seeks damages of at least $1 million, alleging that the Gaineses improperly avoided paying the agency its 7.5 percent share of some projects as a part of a multi-book deal. The dispute focuses on a five-book deal for $12.5 million made in 2017 with Harper Collins, and a subsequent revision to that agreement. Under the original deal, Vigiliano asserts that the agency was a third-party […]
European Commission Opens Investigation of Vivendi’s Lagardere Acquisition
After a preliminary review, the European Commission has formally “opened an in-depth investigation” to assess the competitive effects of Vivendi’s pending acquisition of Lagardere. They are “concerned that the proposed acquisition may reduce competition on a number of markets across the entire book value chain,” as well as in celebrity magazines (where the deal would combine Lagardere’s Paris Match with Vivendi’s Gala and Voici). Without modifications, the deal would combine the two largest book publishers in France. While Vivendi has said it is examining spinning off Editis into a separate company, that has been just talk so far. The EC […]
Zombie eBook Class Action Suit Returns
The fanciful class action suit against Amazon and the five largest trade publishers, alleging that publishers were willing and direct participants in Amazon achieving monopoly-level control of the ebook market, is back in an amended version. At the end of September, US District Judge Gregory Woods had dismissed the case, but without prejudice, allowing the plaintiffs to refile, though it’s not clear why this new version should go any further than the previous suit. Federal Magistrate Judge Valerie Figueredo previously had concluded that the plaintiffs gave “no plausible explanation for why the publishers would have been motivated to participate in […]
Prescott Prevails on Primary Charges of Plagiarism By Pasternak
In the long-running case brought in the UK by Boris Pasternak’s great-niece Anna Pasternak against Lara Prescott, author of the novel THE SECRETS WE KEPT, alleging copyright infringement of Pasternak’s nonfiction book Lara: The Untold Love Story and the Inspiration for Doctor Zhivago, UK Justice Edwin Johnson found in favor of Prescott on all of the major claims. If you are a fan of close textual reading, the dense 149-page ruling is a substantial work that stands on its own. Broadly, Justice Johnson was “satisfied that the defendant used Lara only as a secondary source,” calling it “obvious when one […]