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Lawsuit

Appeals Court Says S&S Violated Telephone Law with Text Message Solicitation for King Book

June 22, 2009
By Michael Cader

The ever-unpredictable Ninth Circuit (e.g. California) Court of Appeals on Friday overturned a lower court verdict and held that Simon & Schuster violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act as currently interpreted by the FCC in sending unsolicited text messages to cellphones in promoting Stephen King’s THE CELL. MediaPost says “the decision appears to mark the first time that a federal appellate court has said that the telephone law applies to text messages.” S&S had argued that a text message is not a “call” under the law–the Appeals court disagreed, saying the law itself “is silent as to  whether a text […]

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Salinger Defendants Claim "Commentary and Criticism"

June 16, 2009
By Michael Cader

Attorneys at Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz filed papers on behalf of Fredrik Colting and his distributor asking the court to deny JD Salinger’s request for an injunction blocking publication of 60 YEARS LATER — Coming through the Rye. They claim the book is ” a complex and undeniably transformative exposition” about JD Salinger and “his best known creation Holden Caulfield” that is “protected parody, containing important commentary and criticism.” Now that he has a lawyer, Fredrik Colting has backtracked on how he positions the work, saying that “while my earlier book cover and some promotional material characterized 60 YEARS […]

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Bloomsbury Calls Allegations "Unfounded, Unsubstantiated and Untrue"

June 15, 2009
By Michael Cader

Bloomsbury responds to the lawsuit filed by the estate of Adrian Jacobs saying that “JK Rowling had never heard of Adrian Jacobs nor seen, read or heard of his book Willy the Wizard until this claim was first made in 2004…. Willy the Wizard is a very insubstantial booklet running to 36 pages which had very limited distribution. The central character of Willy the Wizard is not a young wizard and the book does not revolve around a wizard school.” When first asserted in 2004, “the claim was unable to identify any text in the Harry Potter books which was […]

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Estate of Willy the Wizard Author Sues Bloomsbury, Claims Potter Infringes, and More Legal News

June 15, 2009
By Michael Cader

The estate of children’s book author Adrian Jacobs has sued Bloomsbury in England’s High Court, alleging that JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire “copied substantial parts” of Jacobs’ THE ADVENTURES OF WILLY THE WIZARD–No 1 Livid Land. The estate “is also seeking a Court order against JK Rowling herself for pre-action disclosure in order to determine whether to join her as a defendant to the…action.” They also allege that when Jacobs was first seeking representation, he submitted to Rowling’s agent Christopher Little. Apparently both books feature wizards who compete in contests and have to rescue humans. While […]

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US Attorney Fitzgerald Threatens Harper with Defamation Suit Over Revised Paperback of Book on Terrorism Cases

June 9, 2009
By Michael Cader

In other legal news, federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald threatened to sue HarperCollins in a letter to the publisher about their forthcoming new edition of Peter Lance’s TRIPLE CROSS: How bin Laden’s Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets, and the FBI. (The new paperback is said to contain “26 additional pages and an introduction responding to Fitzgerald.”) Fitzgerald tells the AP “the book lied about the facts and alleged that I deliberately misled the courts and the public in ways that in part caused the deaths in the 1998 embassy bombing attacks and in the attacks of Sept. 11, […]

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Salinger Sues Over Unauthorized Catcher in the Rye Sequel

June 2, 2009
By Michael Cader

J.D. Salinger filed suit in a NY Federal Court against the anonymous author of the forthcoming sequel 60 YEARS LATER: Coming Through the Rye, also naming UK company Windupbird Publishing, Sweden-based Nicotext, and SCB Distributors (which sells Nicotext books in the US) in the action. The complaint declares, “the sequel is not a parody and it does not comment upon or criticize the original. It is a rip-off pure and simple.” This Courthouse News piece adds, “Salinger says the defendants are acting in bad faith to confuse the public, which is likely to think that he wrote the sequel. He […]

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