Legal

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 […]

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 […]