Legal

A couple whose picture was used without permission on the cover of the self-published novel A Gronking to Remember by Lacey Noonan has filed a suit that may further illuminate the extent to which the Communications Decency Act of 1996 shields ebooksellers that run their own self-publishing platforms. The plaintiffs have sued Amazon, Apple and Barnes & Noble along with author Noonan. The 1996 Act protects “interactive computer services” from liability as the publisher or speaker of information provided by another content provider — yet the act has exceptions for intellectual property law and communications privacy law. In a more […]

Two months after a Texas state court jury ruled that Jennifer Lynn Pedroza, former chief marketing officer of Australian publisher The Writers Coffee Shop, is entitled to a share of the proceeds from EL James’ FIFTY SHADES trilogy, state district judge Susan McCoy, ordered the defendant, TWCS founder Amanda Hayward, to deposit a minimum of $10 million into an escrow account until a final accounting determines how much Pedroza is actually owed. According to the Star-Telegram, a hearing last week “divulged that the e-publishing business that Hayward, Pedroza and two other women formed, which originally released what would become an international […]

Online retailers have been consistently plagued by those who post product reviews for a fee, and some, like Amazon, are clear in declaring that this practice violates their terms of service. Now Amazon is going a step further, filing its first-ever complaint in Washington state court earlier this week. The defendants are Jay Gentile as well as “John Does” running several websites, and Amazon is accusing them of “trademark infringement, false advertising and violations of the Anticyber­squatting Consumer Protection Act and the Washington Consumer Protection Act” through the creation of websites that offer to sell verified Amazon reviews from between $19 and $22 […]

We were curious as to why the law firm of Giskin Soloratoff Anderson & Stewart filed two separate lawsuits in Indiana against Author Solutions last November and earlier this month when they had a similar class action suit pending in New York. In a telephone interview Tuesday, Oren Giskan told us the Indiana cases were filed “because we came to understand that all of the claims we wished to have resolved could only be done in the State of Indiana” while the NY suit, presided over by Judge Denise Cote, likely would not. Specifically, Giskan pointed to contracts from Author […]

Weeks after officially seeking class certification in a lawsuit against Author Solutions in New York Federal Court, the firm of Giskin Soloratoff Anderson & Stewart filed a similar suit last week in a Federal Court in Indiana — where ASI’s main offices are located — on behalf of two new plaintiffs, Patricia Wheeler and Helen Heightsman Gordon, also seeking class action status. The new suit, first reported on by Writer Beware, is similar to the previous action, alleging fraud, unjust enrichment, and violation of various statutes and consumer protection acts. It adds the extra wrinkle of alleging ASI also violated the Indiana […]