The Supreme Court was supposed to consider the Authors Guild’s petition to have the high court hear their appeal of the Google Books scanning case at last Friday’s Conference — but when orders from that Conference were announced on Monday morning, the Guild’s case was not on the list. Presumably, that means consideration was postponed to the Court’s next Conference, on April 15, though there is no official update to the case docket yet. In a separate, long-running case, Eleventh Circuit District Judge Orinda Evans once again found mostly in favor of Georgia State University over a group of academic publishers […]
Legal
11 Years Later, Authors Guild’s Last Appeal Has April Fool’s Hearing
The Authors Guild’s petition to have the Supreme Court hear their appeal of the copyright infringement case first filed against Google’s scanning of library books in 2005 will be reviewed at the court’s conference on April 1. If you have any need to reacquaint yourself with the issues, the docket entry for the petition for cert. filed on December 31, 2015 is here — and the Court of Appeals unanimous verdict upholding (former) District Court Judge Denny Chin’s original and unequivocal ruling that Google’s scanning qualified as “fair use” is here.
Mockingbird Mass Market Reversion Was Set In Motion In 2011
Despite last week’s suggestion by the New Republic that the termination of Hachette Book Group’s mass market license for To Kill a Mockingbird was a confusing “first action” of Harper Lee’s estate following her death, the process was set in motion 5 years ago and has been hidden in plain sight at least since 2013. Per the copyright law provision that allows the reversion of rights upon request for pre-1978 works after 56 years from the original issuing of the copyright, in April 2011 Lee filed a notice of termination with Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins and San Val, which publishes a school & library edition […]
Briefs: Schumer’s ‘Lower Back Tattoo’ Publishes August 16; Zola Books Gets More Funding; and More
Amy Schumer‘s book will be published by Gallery on August 16 — and it has retained the proposal name, THE GIRL WITH THE LOWER BACK TATTOO. Funding Zola Books closed another round of funding last week. The new round adds something under $3.4 million since the company’s last announced funding in 2013. (That last round was extended beyond the original close to add funds for their purchase of Bookish assets.) The new round was led by previous investor Charles Dolan, founder of Cablevision. Zola hopes to expand the recent rollout of their Everywhere Store widget enabling print and ebook sales by other sites. Corporate […]
Game Over: Supreme Court Denies Apple’s Request for Appeal
This morning the Supreme Court released results from their Friday Conference, indicating that they denied Apple’s request to have their appeal of the ebook antitrust case heard. The Court’s denial of cert. brings the lawsuit to an end, and also means Apple’s monetary settlement with the state attorneys general and the consumer class providing $400 million in compensation to consumers (plus $50 million in attorney fees) will now proceed. That settlement, originally reached in June 2014 and approved by Judge Cote two months later, was upheld separately by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals last month. Class-action firm Hagens Berman’s managing partner Steve Berman, who originally […]
Supreme Court Will Consider Apple’s Case on March 4
Apple did not have to wait long for a new Supreme Court conference date. Originally scheduled for the court’s February 19 conference, which was cancelled after Justice Scalia’s death, and then briefly in limbo, Apple’s request to have their appeal heard will now be taken up at the court’s next conference session on Friday, March 4. (The results of the conference are generally announced on or before the following Monday.) For perspective, note that over 100 cases are on the Court’s conference calendar — including a second one involving Apple (part of their longstanding litigation with Samsung).