Since I hadn’t seen this come up on the AIIP or BUSLIB lists.
Thursday’s Wall Street Journal had an article on the 2nd Circuit Court’s scrapping of a 2005 settlement between database operators and free-lance writers over a class-action lawsuit on unauthorized reproduction of the writers’ works. The issue was District Judge George B. Michael’s lack of jurisdiction over most of the claims (which involved infringement of unregistered copyrights).
The full opinion is here, for those more up-to-date on the legal wherefores. The case got sent back to the district court, with the operators and free-lance writers having up to 14 days to seek a rehearing before the whole circuit if they want to challenge the ruling of the 2nd Circuit Court.
The settlement had divided plaintiffs’ claims into copyrights registered prior to infringement, copyrights registered after the infringement but before December 31, 2002 and copyrights which were either registered after December 31, 2002 or not registered at all.
The database operators were still deciding how to proceed at the time of the article - affected companies include Dow Jones & Company, the New York Times Company, Reed Elsevier Group PLC and Voyager Learning Company.
The Freelance Rights blog is also covering the story, with alternative links to the majority opinion, a dissenting opinion and a note on why the 2nd Circuit Court judges did not recuse themselves despite being class members themselves. Yes, it’s a blog by objectors to the original settlement. I’m not sure why there’s nothing readily apparent on the National Writers Union website - it’s certainly covered on the Authors Guild site.
