Last Friday US District Court Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald granted summary judgment in favor of HarperCollins in their lawsuit brought in late 2011 against Open Road over the epublisher’s publication of JULIE OF THE WOLVES in ebook form. Judge Buchwald writes that, “Based on a plain reading of the contractual language, we hold that the 1971 contract grants HarperCollins the exclusive right to license third parties to publish e-book versions of Julie of the Wolves.” She finds that is “a right which was infringed by Open Road in its unlicensed e-book publication of Julie of the Wolves.” The judge has […]
Legal
Kobo Continues to Press Case to Preserve Agency In Canada
Kobo continues to press their motion to rescind the ebook pricing consent agreements in Canada between the Competition Commission and the four agency publishers that we first reported on last week. In a memorandum of fact filed March 10, they reiterated their primary argument that “without a stay, Kobo will be irreparably harmed. Its contracts with four of the largest E-book publishers in Canada will be terminated or fundamentally altered. Kobo – not the Consenting Publishers – will bear the financial losses arising from these changes.” As in the US, the Commission has focused on their predictions that “the price […]
Asimov Estate and Trident Media Spar in Court Over Termination
For those wondering why large portions of science fiction writer Isaac Asimov’s voluminous backlist remain unavailable, a recent dispute between the author’s estate and Trident Media Group may provide a partial answer. The case is also worth watching for any literary agency based in New York (or with New York clients) that has an automatic renewal clause. The essence of the dispute is this: The Asimov estate, overseen by his widow Janet and daughter Robyn, sought to terminate their representation agreement with Trident in November 2013 after 5 years of working together. TMG told them they would have to wait until the expiration […]
Kobo Opposes Canadian Pricing Settlements; Economists Support Apple’s Appeal
Kobo recently filed in opposition to the agency pricing publisher settlements in Canada, objecting to the rapid 40-day timeframe in which they need to renegotiate major publisher contracts, but also arguing that the newly-imposed terms will make them “suffer significant unrecoverable losses” if “Kobo accepts the amendments and shifts its operations to an Agency Lite model.” They write that “a ban on Agency, even in the short term, will have a lasting and irreversible negative impact on the market for E-books in Canada.” More broadly, Kobo argues the arrival of agency in Canada was different than in the US and not the result of […]
Apple Makes Their Case to the Appeals Court
On Tuesday Apple filed with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals their arguments to overturn Judge Denise Cote’s ruling finding the company guilty of violating the Sherman Act when they entered the ebook market with their agency contracts. The company’s attorneys write: “The district court’s ruling that Apple, in the very act of launching the iPad, inventing the iBooks Store, and entering the e-books market, violated the Sherman Act is a radical departure from modern antitrust law and policy. If allowed to stand, the ruling will stifle innovation, chill competition, and harm consumers. This Court should overturn it. Apple’s entry as an […]
Apple Asks For Next eBook Trial(s) to be Moved Back to California, Texas
Apple has not been doing well in New York’s Southern District under Judge Denise Cote, so the company is trying a last-minute effort to get the damages trial moved to a different venue. Or rather, split into two venues. They want the judicial panel for multidistrict litigation to return the consumer class action suits to the Northern District of California — where many of the suits were originally filed, and where Apple is located — and they ask for the states’ suit to be returned to the Western District of Texas, where it was first filed by the Texas Attorney […]