Legal

Careless People author Sarah Wynn-Williams is suing Meta to overturn the gag order that prevents her from talking about her whistleblowing book. The day after the publication of Careless People in March 2025, an arbitrator ruled that Wynn-Williams discussing or otherwise promoting her book would violate the non-disparagement agreement she signed when Facebook fired her in 2017. The order remains in effect and Wynn-Williams appeared silently at the UK’s Hay Festival in May. The lawsuit claims that Meta is “punishing” Wynn-Williams for speaking to lawmakers and writing her book about Meta’s problematic workplace culture, including sexual harassment from her superiors, […]

One-hundred-seventeen authors who opted out of the Bartz v. Anthropic settlement are suing Anthropic separately for copyright infringement, led by Thomas William Shakespeare. (Just two of the plaintiffs, Laura Esquivel and Jordi Castells, have sought court approval for opting out after the deadline.) The authors all assert that they “did not discover, and could not have reasonably discovered, that their specific works were included in Anthropic’s private, internal database” until “November 24, 2025, when the direct notice to class members was completed and/or their claims were tolled pending the approval of the settlement of Bartz, or February 9, 2026, the […]

After winning their suit against Anna’s Archive in May, thirteen publishers are suing another pirate site, WeLib. “Plaintiffs bring this case to protect and enforce their copyrights and to stop Defendants’ intentional, widespread, and ongoing unlawful reproduction and distribution of literary works in the United States, to the detriment of Publishers, authors, and the public,” the filing reads. According to the complaint filed by Apress Media; Cengage; Elsevier; Hachette Book Group; Harper Collins; Wiley; Bedford, Freeman, & Worth; Macmillan Publishing Group; McGraw Hill; Pearson; Penguin Random House; Simon & Schuster; and Taylor & Francis, WeLib hosts 43 million books and […]

Amy Griffin, author of the NYT-bestselling memoir The Tell, has filed an Anti-SLAPP motion to strike down the lawsuit brought against her in California Superior Court by a former classmate, and now has countersued her accuser for defamation in the US District Court of Nevada. In March, a plaintiff filing as “Jane Doe” sued Griffin  for invasion of privacy, claiming negligence, infliction of emotional distress, and more, and stating Griffin used details of the plaintiff’s own sexual assaults in the book. The suit named the Griffin’s collaborator, Sam Lansky, as well as the book’s publisher and imprint, Penguin Random House and […]