Book People Archive

David v Goliath - Or do authors have eRights ????

 As a member of the Authors Guild, I received this morning the e-mail appended
below the horizontal line regarding the Random House/Rosetta case. At the end
of the e-mail is the preliminary statement from an amicus-curiae brief
filed by
the Authors Guild and the Association of Authors' Representatives.  There is
also a link to the entire brief on the Authors Guild website.

Patricia Eakins

----------

Thu, 12 Apr 2001
 "Authors Guild" <staff@[redacted]>

Authors & Agents Weigh in on Landmark E-Book Case

In late February, Random House sued RosettaBooks, a new e-Book publisher,
claiming infringement of its book publishing rights.  Rosetta had licensed
the eBook rights to classic novels from William Styron, Kurt Vonnegut and
Robert Parker, all of whom had entered standard book publishing contracts
with a Random House imprint in the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s.

No mention of electronic rights or eBooks was made in these contracts.
Instead, the Random House argues that the traditional right to "print,
publish and sell the Work in book form," which appears in countless book
contracts still in force, necessarily includes the right to exploit the Work
in eBook form.

On April 13, the Authors Guild and the Association of Authors'
Representatives jointly submitted an amicus brief to the Court, arguing that
Random House's claim is wrong and harmful to authors and the reading public.

Many thanks to David Wolf and Laura Gilbert, attorneys at Cowan DeBaets
Abrahams and Sheppard, who represent the Authors Guild on the brief and to
Kenneth P. Norwick of Norwick & Schad, who represents the AAR on the brief.

The preliminary statement from the brief follows. Our entire brief may be
found at our website: www.authorsguild.org.


----------------------
PRELIMINARY STATEMENT

With this action, Random House seeks retroactively to re-define the rights
it has acquired from authors for generations.  For decades, authors -- many
of whom negotiate their contracts without the benefit of agents -- have
relied on the plain language of Random House's boilerplate contract.  When
authors signed Random House contracts licensing the publisher to "print,
publish and sell the Work in book form, the authors had a right to believe
those were precisely the rights they were licensing.  Now, more than 30
years after some of the contracts were signed, Random House seeks to
demonstrate that its straightforward language has acquired new meaning.

At stake is the fundamental interpretation of book contracts, documents
which carefully and explicitly define the rights and formats that are being
licensed to a publisher and clearly spell out the royalties to be paid for
the exploitation of these rights.  Should Random House prevail, then the
traditional interpretation of countless other specifically enumerated rights
including the traditional "reservation of rights" clause may be thrown into
question.  The end result would not be clarity of contract, but confusion,
as authors, agents and publishers struggle to understand the scope of rights
licensed in contracts negotiated long ago.
             
Also at stake are fundamental copyright questions and the vibrant future of
the electronic publishing industry.  Should Random House succeed in its
attempt to radically and retroactively revise its own contract, it would
(1) prevent authors from fairly sharing in the rewards of the electronic
publishing industry by allowing Random House alone to exploit these rights,
(2) thwart the essential congressional intent and constitutional purpose of
the Copyright Act to ensure that incentives properly flow to the authors of
creative works, and  (3) chill the emergence of an electronic publishing
industry by preventing entrepreneurial companies such as RosettaBooks from
acquiring the rights to tens of thousands of works.

Authors, of all people, should be able to rely upon the plain meaning of
words when they enter into a contract.  In defense of this basic contractual
principal, the Guild and the AAR have for the first time joined as amici in
an action.

Patricia Eakins
Editor and Publisher
Frigate: The Transverse Review of Books
www.frigatezine.com
editor@[redacted]