At Bloomsbury Children’s, Mary Kate Castellani has been promoted to editorial director; Melissa Kavonic to managing editorial director; Kate Sederstrom to assistant editor; Beth Eller to senior director of school and library marketing and domestic sub rights; Phoebe Dyer to marketing associate; and Jeanette Levy to assistant art director. Stephen Isaacs joined the McGraw-Hill Business team as a senior editor. Kendra Newton has been promoted to senior marketing director for Dey Street Books. Raffaella de Angelis joined producer and distributor Fremantle this week, working on literary acquisitions for their global drama division, as well as for production companies The Apartment (part of Fremantle) and […]
Legal
The Audible Settlement Is Finally Public
Audible and the seven publishers who sued the company over its planned Captions feature — referred to as an Audiobooks-to-Text Service in the filings — complied with Judge Valerie Caproni’s request to make public the settlement, with only the amounts redacted. The published agreement reaffirms that Audible will make a monetary settlement payment to each of the litigating publishers, and reinforces that they will not caption books by AAP members without permission. The redacted portion reads: “In consideration of the Parties’ performance hereunder, Audible agrees to pay each of the Publishers the amount of [REDACTED] (the “Settlement Payment”), equaling a […]
Barnes & Noble Aims to Settle with Age Discrimination Plaintiff
Barbara Tavres and Barnes & Noble, which Tavres sued for age discrimination, have agreed on an intention to participate in private mediation through Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services (JAMS). Together, the parties requested that the court allow them to enter mediation and asked to postpone scheduling for 90 days to continue to explore settlement. According to a separate joint case management statement, “The Parties have been informally sharing information with one another in an effort to explore potentially narrowing the issues and causes of action, and also to explore the possibility of early settlement, and they will continue to do […]
Judge Pushes Back on Proposed Redactions of Audible Captions Settlement
It turns out Judge Valerie Caproni really meant it when she told Audible and the litigating publishers that the only redaction of their settlement agreement she was inclined to allow was the settlement amount(s). In her new order, filed February 27 after reviewing the proposed redactions, Caproni gave the parties until March 4 to make one of two choices: either “(1) redact only the settlement amount(s) and file the redacted agreement on the public docket, in which case the Court will approve the parties’ proposed injunction order and retain enforcement jurisdiction over the entirety of the settlement agreement, or (2) […]
Netflix Slaps Back At Choose Your Own Adventure
Netflix has answered ChooseCo’s complaint in a Vermont Federal Court, denying all claims that it violated trademark law by referencing the company’s Choose Your Own Adventure brand during its movie Bandersnatch. Further, Netflix claims that ChooseCo’s trademark should be cancelled. “Netflix has been and will continue to be damaged if the registrations of Chooseco’s alleged marks are not cancelled,” says the counterclaim, and because the “marks are generic and incapable of source identification…they cannot qualify for trademark protection.” Netflix asserts that Chooseco failed to protect its trademark, resulting in “Choose your own adventure” having become a generic phrase widely used […]
Apple Tries to Block Just-Released German Book About Their App Store
Apple is inadvertently promoting a book just released in Germany by the former head of their German app store business: APP STORE CONFIDENTIAL, by Tom Sadowski, from Murmann Verlag. (They are a small business publisher, founded in 2004, and seem to do custom publishing as well.) The company’s lawyers reportedly wrote to Sadowski and his publisher to demand that they not “deliver the book” and “recall all copies of the book already in circulation and…destroy all book manuscripts.” Apple says Sadowski “violated his employment” agreement in writing the book and alleges that the book contains “business secrets” that are “of […]