After multiple adjournments as various offers from the defendant were considered by the government, accused manuscript thief Filippo Bernardini is expected to plead guilty on Friday to wire fraud. The NYT got the news from emails sent to victims from the US district attorney in the Southern District of New York. That’s a more serious disposition than the deferred prosecution request (an informal type of probation) that the government was asked to consider during the summer.
Legal
2022: The Year in Legal News
Legal news this year was dominated by the Penguin Random House antitrust trial, with the bulk of our reporting on the case running from July through October. The biggest publishing story of the year, which tracked the government’s (successful) attempt to block PRH from merging with Simon & Schuster, began with the entire industry learning the term monopsony and ended with the resignation of PRH ceo Markus Dohle. In between, we heard testimony from experts, PRH executives, and industry insiders about how in-house competition works and witnessed the coining of a new term–Anticipated Top Best Sellers. Judge Florence Pan presided, […]
EU Finalizes Amazon Antitrust Settlements
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 […]
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 […]