Four Supreme Court Justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson — all recused themselves from considering an appeal in a copyright case, BMG Rights Management v. Vetter, leaving the court without a quorom. All four are Penguin Random House authors, and there has been criticism in the past when justices did not recuse themselves from cases related to Bertelsmann. Monday’s action suggests that for now the high court could be unable to review any case involving Bertelsmann or its subsidiaries. That lets stand the January ruling by the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Which is […]
Legal
Judge Recommends Certifying Consumer Class In Antitrust Suit Against Amazon
The fanciful, long-running lawsuit in which class action specialists Hagens Berman are trying to prove that Amazon has monopoly control of the US ebook market took a big step towards actually making it to a potential trial. The case tries to demonstrate that Amazon’s position actually harms consumers by inhibiting price promotions and new business models through contract provisions that are effectively MFNs. On October 1, Magistrate Judge Gabriel W. Gorenstein recommended confirming the proposed class of ebook purchasers from January 2017 until the certification of the class. As previously reported, the attorneys’ expert witness estimates that Amazon overcharged consumers […]
Attorneys In Anthropic Settlement File Appeal Over Fee-Sharing
Just before the August 19 deadline for any appeals of the final settlement in the Anthropic copyright infringement case, Edelson and Oppenheim + Zebrak, the two firms brought in by publishers as “Publishers’ Coordination Counsel,” filed a notice of appeal to the Ninth Circuit’s Court of Appeals. The firms say they “intend to focus their appeal on issues related to the Order Granting in Part Motion for Attorneys’ Fees, Reimbursement of Expenses,” but the notice is phrased as an appeal of “the Judgment entered on July 20, 2026, including all prior orders encompassed in that decision.” That leaves opaque for […]
Publishers File Novel, Winnable AI Suit, Alleging Google Raided Google Books and Play Files to Train Gemini
After literally dozens of metoo infringement lawsuits against the AI titans in multiple jurisdictions, on Friday three publishers filed a suit against Google in the Southern District of New York that stands on new, undisputable legal ground if supported by the facts. They allege that Google “illegally copied works” from such “scope-limited programs” as Google Books, the Google Play ebookstore, and Google Scholar in order “to train early iterations of the Gemini [AI] Models.” That behavior would be clear copyright infringement, outside of any conceivable Fair Use defense or other grey area related to the transformative development of AI models. […]
French Fee On Amazon Book Shipments Survives Final Legal Challenge
France’s Conseil d’Etat, the country’s highest court, ruled on Wednesday in support a law first passed in 2022 that sets a minimum delivery fee of €3 for online book orders of less than €35. The law was designed to support local brick-and-mortar stores from unfair competition from Amazon, which had been charging a delivery fee of only one euro cent on book deliveries. France has long limited book discounting, and in 2014 they banned free shipping on discounted books–leading to Amazon’s minimal charge. Last December, the EU Court of Justice had returned the matter to French courts for further evaluation, […]
Judge Rules Termination of NEH Grants Was Unconstitutional
In a lengthy, detailed and often incredulous 143-page opinion, District Court Judge Colleen McMahon found in summary judgement that the mass termination of over 1,400 National Endowment for the Humanities grants in April 2025 by DOGE “was unlawful because it was undertaken in violation of the First Amendment, in violation of the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment, and without statutory authority.” Additionally, “DOGE officials lacked statutory authority to identify, select, or direct the termination of NEH grants” and “the resulting terminations were ultra vires [Latin for beyond the powers].” The two cases were brought by the Authors Guild […]