Comment Contract law is more clear cut than this however.. (Score 5, Informative) 116
What about the case where Random House thought they had the rights to publsh works in electronic media (based upon older contracts which indicated the rights to publish books but didn't know about electronic ebooks) and thus sought to get an injunction to halt Rosetta Books ( an epublisher) from publishing ebooks of those same titles via rights Rosetta Books purchased from the authors. The court (in New York State) ruled in favour of the authors.
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/e-books/7481 3
Interestingly, the injunction was denied because Random House failed to show how there would be irreparable harm, but also, the judge believed that they would fail on the merits of their case. In short, he ruled that the rights to the works in question were held by the authors and that only those specific rights given to Random House were those applying to 'books' i.e. paper-based books. Advances in technology which opened new media, caused new 'rights' to be held by the authors, and not the publishing company which had previously purchased the rights to those same works.
Random House argued it placed an unreasonable burden to have to go back over all those old contracts and renegotiate new contracts based upon new technologies as they developed, etc. but the judge was unsympathetic, indicating that the fact that Rosetta Books had pursued negotiations with the authors (or their estates) to purchase these rights, indicated the authors had asserted their authority over their own rights and works in question.
Also interesting, was that Kurt Vonnegut was involved incidentally as Rosetta Books had purchased rights to his books, even though he doesn't like ebooks.
This ruling was upheld upon appeal.
http://patenting-art.com/clients/entlawrp.htm
I realise that this case involved interpretation of an existing contract, and it only applies to Random House because other publishers' contracts may be defined differently (and most certainly the language of those contracts may have changed after this case) but what if any, implications would it have in this case?
(Sorry the URLs aren't links, but I'm a bastard and prefer plain text.)
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/e-books/748
Interestingly, the injunction was denied because Random House failed to show how there would be irreparable harm, but also, the judge believed that they would fail on the merits of their case. In short, he ruled that the rights to the works in question were held by the authors and that only those specific rights given to Random House were those applying to 'books' i.e. paper-based books. Advances in technology which opened new media, caused new 'rights' to be held by the authors, and not the publishing company which had previously purchased the rights to those same works.
Random House argued it placed an unreasonable burden to have to go back over all those old contracts and renegotiate new contracts based upon new technologies as they developed, etc. but the judge was unsympathetic, indicating that the fact that Rosetta Books had pursued negotiations with the authors (or their estates) to purchase these rights, indicated the authors had asserted their authority over their own rights and works in question.
Also interesting, was that Kurt Vonnegut was involved incidentally as Rosetta Books had purchased rights to his books, even though he doesn't like ebooks.
This ruling was upheld upon appeal.
http://patenting-art.com/clients/entlawrp.htm
I realise that this case involved interpretation of an existing contract, and it only applies to Random House because other publishers' contracts may be defined differently (and most certainly the language of those contracts may have changed after this case) but what if any, implications would it have in this case?
(Sorry the URLs aren't links, but I'm a bastard and prefer plain text.)
