Amazon’s Luxembourg subsidiary has won the auction for the .book domain. The company prevailed over nine competitors, including Google and Bowker, the latter reportedly the last to drop out, according to the Register. Terms of the auction were not disclosed but it is understood to have been “between $5 million and $10 million.” Though not reported elsewhere, according to the ICANN database, Amazon also appears to be the only contender for the .author domain as well, listed as “in contracting” (which has its own peculiar meaning for ICANN). When Amazon first applied for the .book domain in early 2013, the company said it would run it […]
Legal
AAP Asks for Full Appeals Court to Review GSU Decision
Following last month’s favorable ruling from a three-panel Appeals Court panel in the Georgia State University case considering fair use in academic digital reserves, the AAP is pressing the issue by asking for the full Court of Appeals to review the case. The AAP is seizing upon the unusual “concurring” opinion appended to the Appeals Court ruling by Judge C. Roger Vinson. It’s a bit of a misnomer, since Judge Vinson actually disagreed with the other two judges; to him, the case was quite simple (“GSU’s use of Plaintiffs’ copyright protected works without compensation was, in a word, unfair”). In a release explaining […]
Harper Gets Limited Injunction, Modest $37,000 Award in JULIE OF THE WOLVES Lawsuit
HarperCollins’ nearly three-year-old lawsuit against Open Road Integrated Media over the ebook rights to Jean Craighead George’s novel JULIE OF THE WOLVES has been resolved, eight months after Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald found in Harper’s favor. In a ruling to address damages, Judge Buchwald granted a permanent injunction that prevents Open Road from selling the ebook edition for JULIE (which the publisher pulled by May, once it was clear both parties would not reach a settlement) and any other Harper titles that contain the exact same contractual language about the publishing rights, but denying HarperCollins’ bid for $1.1 million in legal fees and […]
Navy SEAL Bissonnette Sues Former Attorney For Malpractice on NO EASY DAY Vetting
Less than a week after reports emerged that former Navy SEAL and author of NO EASY DAY (and the forthcoming NO HERO) Matt Bissonnette was under criminal investigation by the federal government, he has taken steps against his former attorneys, filing a lawsuit for malpractice in a Manhattan federal court on Wednesday. According to the AP (the full complaint is not yet available online), filing suit under his pseudonym Mark Owen, Bissonnette alleges that Kevin Podlaski at Carson Boxberger in Fort Wayne, Indiana, “gave him bad advice that tarnished his reputation, cost him his security clearance and caused him to surrender much […]
Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Sherlock Holmes Case
On Monday the Supreme Court declined to hear the final appeal from the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle, which claims the Sherlock Holmes characters remain protected by copyright because of 10 original stories published after 1923. A District Court ruled against the estate in late 2013, and this June an appeals court ruling went even further in affirming that the Sherlock Holmes characters and stories written prior to 1923 are in the public domain. The original suit was brought by Leslie Klinger, seeking clarification after the Conan Doyle Estate demanded (and was paid) $5000 in licensing fees for an anthology of new fiction featuring Sherlock Holmes […]
Judge Certifies Author Class In Suit Against Harlequin
The author class has been certified by Second Circuit District Court Judge William H. Pauley, III in the suit brought by three authors against Harlequin for underpayment on ebooks licensed to Harlequin subsidiaries. In May, the Appeals Court overturned Judge Judge Harold Baer’s dismissal of the class action suit, allowing one of four original claims to go forward. (Judge Baer passed away in May, which is why a different judge has taken over the case.) The class as approved by Judge Pauley incorporates authors in the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand who signed standard Harlequin contracts […]