Legal

In the December hearing on Apple’s appeal of the ebook pricing verdict, Judge Dennis Jacobs was the one leaning quotably in Apple’s direction (he is the judge who suggested that any collusion among publishers trying “to break the hold of a monopolist” in the ebook market was “like all the mice getting together to put a bell on the cat”). Again in a Tuesday hearing on Apple’s separate appeal seeking to disqualify the monitor Michael Bromwich, appointed by Judge Denise Cote to monitor Apple following her injunction, Judge Jacobs expressed doubts about the court-imposed actions. Jacobs suggested the amount Apple was paying the monitor […]

After a near two-year odyssey of complaints, documents, motions to dismiss, and plaintiff changes, the lawsuit seeking class action status against Author Solutions alleging multiple breaches completed discovery on January 22 and is moving to the next stage. A February 26 filing in New York’s Southern District Court by Kelvin James, Jodi Foster, and Mary Simmons (added to the suit after Terry Hardy dropped out in the fall of 2013) asks Judge Denise Cote for certification of the class, covering 170,000 or more authors “who, during the period 2007 through the present, purchased a publishing package or service from Author Solutions.” The plaintiffs say their lawsuit […]

A Texas state court jury has ruled in a 10-2 decision that Jennifer Lynn Pedroza, former chief marketing officer of Australian publisher The Writers Coffee Shop, is entitled to a share of the proceeds of the publisher’s most prominent titles, EL James’ FIFTY SHADES trilogy, which TWCS originally published before selling the rights to Random House. Pedroza (along with Christina Beebe and Jennifer McGuire) was among the four original partners, along with Amanda Hayward, and Pedroza’s complaint filed last May alleged that Hayward “tried to convert Coffee Shop into TWCS, an Australian sole proprietorship that she, alone, owned. She signed a contract with […]