Judge Robert Patterson agreed that author JK Rowling would face irreparable harm from RDR Books’ proposed publication of the HARRY POTTER LEXICON and ruled in her favor in the copyright infringement suit brought by Rowling and Warner Bros. Patterson said the publisher “had failed to establish an affirmative defense of fair use” and issued a permanent injunction against publication–but since the book had not been issued yet, he awarded minimum statutory damages of $6,750. In the full opinion, Patterson walks a fine line through the nuanced arguments made in the case. He acknowledges that “reference works that share the Lexicon’s […]
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More on Sundance Sale, and Releases from Harlequin, Authonomy and DailyLit
* Rowman & Littlefield was a little slow with their press release yesterday, but ceo Jed Lyons hails their acquisition of Sundance/Newbridge as “a terrific entry for us into the K-8 educational marketplace. In addition, through our book distribution business, National Book Network, we believe there are many attractive NBN juvenile trade books that can be used to enhance the existing selection of trade books that Sundance distributes through its Sundance Picks core classroom library collections.” President and CEO Paul Konowitch will remain in place, running the business from its current Northborough, Massachusetts location. * In other press releases, Harlequin […]
Palin Books? There's One
Seattle’s Epicenter Press has Kaylene Johnson’s short book SARAH: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska’s Political Establishment Upside Down, published in May, the only book so far about the Republican’s new vice presidential running mate. The publisher told a WSJ blog on Friday “they anticipate ramping up production with Ingram Book Co. for ‘tens of thousands’ more copies.” Prior to the vice presidential announcement the book was not being carried by Amazon or BN.com, though that changed quickly. Epicenter is distributed to the trade by Graphic Arts Center Publishing. Press publisher and co-owner Kent Sturgis told the Seattle Times they […]
Author Solutions Pays to Settle Software Piracy Claim
Author Solutions has agreed to pay $50,000 to settle claims brought by the Business Software Alliance that the company was running unlicensed copies of computer software programs from Adobe, Microsoft and Symantec. CEO Kevin Weiss said the problem stemmed from “one of our companies prior to our ownership.”Indy Star
CIA Responds to Suskind
The CIA has felt it necessary to issue a press release in response to charges made in Ron Suskind’s THE WAY OF THE WORLD–keeping it in the news cycle. One of their denials only reasserts how wrong the Agency was on Iraq to begin with: “Suskind also alleges that the United States knew before the start of hostilities with Iraq that Saddam Hussein had no stockpiles of WMD. That, too, is both false and wrong. False because the Intelligence Community assessed that Saddam Hussein had such weapons. Wrong because it implies the Community chose to ignore information of which it […]
Patsy Kensit, Waiting to Happen
A UK papers reports that after discussing “her family’s murky connections to London’s underworld” on a BBc show, Patsy Kensit is shopping an autobiography through Simon Trewin at United Agents, but he “is touting Kensit as a fiction writer too. ‘This is not a one book proposition,’ he said. ‘Patsy is a whole publishing brand just waiting to happen.”The First Post