Legal

When an organization that has created open educational resources (OER), informally known as “free stuff,” and sues FedEx, how much should publishers care about the outcome? The answer: a lot. In case you hadn’t heard, a non-profit curriculum provider called Great Minds has filed a federal lawsuit against FedEx. Here’s the background. Great Minds is…

Marshall McLuhan, the famous social scientist, told us more than 50 years ago that newer and more powerful means of communication have turned the world into a "global village," something that brings people together at one level, but at another level, complicates social relationships. A bigger, worldwide, audience increases the number of people who might…

“We know we have shot ourselves in both feet. And a lot of us didn’t want to. And we’re rather scared.” That’s what one member of the London publishing industry has said to me this morning, on waking to find that the Leave camp has been successful in the UK referendum about whether to stay…

The Russian Federal Anti-Monopoly Service (FAS) has been asked to consider a petition from leading publishers alarmed by what they believe is the unfair market share of Prosveshenye, a leading producer in Russian educational material. As written up by Eugene Vorotnikov at The Bookseller, the petition has followed “a recently-issued recommendation from the Moscow city government’s education department…

Recently, one of the bright spots of British publishing, as in the States and elsewhere, has been the craze for adult coloring books. Their popularity has helped to fuel the industry’s gains in print sales. (More on the UK’s 2015 statistics here.) But now, The Bookseller’s Lisa Campbell reports, several publishers—ranging from large corporations to…

At the end of 2015, Democrats and Republicans in Congress surprised nearly everyone by coming together to pass the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA. This law, which replaced what was known as No Child Left Behind, or NCLB, embodies the federal government’s education policies and sets guidelines for billions of dollars in federal spending.…

It is interesting to watch the Authors Guild take the next vital step in proving itself irrelevant. “As part of its ongoing effort to raise writers’ income,” reports Publishers Weekly this first week of January, 2016, “the Authors Guild is sending an open letter to members of the Association of American Publishers. The Guild will…

The Authors Guild’s decade-long legal battle with Google reached the U.S. Supreme Court last Thursday, as the professional organization asked the court to settle whether or not book digitization represents “copyright infringement on an epic scale.” The appeal does not mean the Supreme Court will hear the case and issue a broad ruling on copyright,…

The Authors Guild has officially asked the Supreme Court to hear its case against Google — a long-running dispute over whether copyright law allows for Google to scan and post excerpts from books for its Google Books service. The group filed a writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court Thursday. Google's free service allows users…

The Department of Justice is asking the Supreme Court to refuse to hear Apple's appeal of a ruling that it conspired with publishers to raise the price of ebooks. The antitrust ruling against Apple—issued in 2013 by U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote and affirmed this year by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals—was "supported…