Legal

It’s no accident that the petition Apple submitted to the Supreme Court last week begins with a reference to Leegin Creative Leather Products, a manufacturer of fancy cowboy belts. Or that the case known as Leegin v. PSKS comes up 81 times in the 250-page document. Apple’s appeal rises or falls on Leegin. And Leegin,…

Having maintained its innocence throughout the federal district court trial, which it lost, and in the appeal, which it lost in a split decision, it should surprise no one that Apple is taking its e-book antitrust case to the highest court in the land. Accompanying Thursday’s 250-page petition was a brief statement to the press:…

Google’s legal winning streak continues with last week’s decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which rejected the Authors Guild’s appeal of the dismissal of its lawsuit against Google over the latter’s massive book-scanning project. I won’t take up space here recapping the timeline of this now-ten-year-old legal saga – there’s a pretty good…

The association of German book sellers accused Amazon and its subsidiary Audible on Monday of building a monopoly in the audio book business as it lodged complaints with the German competition authority and the European Commission. The association said in a statement that Amazon and Audible were abusing their dominant market position to force publishers…

Of all the contract-reform issues being discussed today around publishing and its contracts with authors, the non-compete clause is among the most bitterly derided. And the “non-compete,” as the clause is called, is the focus of the fourth white paper in the Authors Guild’s Fair Contract Initiative series of articles outlining author contract reform.