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RosettaBooks vs Random House Continued

© Richard Loeffler

A few weeks ago I wrote about a new e-publisher, RosettaBooks. I complained about the cost of their books, said they were more than the paperback edition of the same title. I stand by that but I apologize to everyone because I missed the real news about Rosetta Books. I think a few weeks later I mentioned that their list looked like a Bantam/Dell/Doubleday catalogue. They had a very impressive list of books and authors. Well, it seems I wasn't the only one who noticed the list. Random House is suing RosettaBooks for copyright infringement and is seeking an injunction to stop them from selling certain titles on their web site.

I believe I also said that I thought Random House was correct in believing it owned the electronic rights to the books. Well, I'm no lawyer and I wasn't privy to the contracts. I'm still no lawyer and even if I was privy to the contracts, I doubt I could interpret them anyway, but from what I've read so far about the case, I'm changing my opinion. I think RosettaBooks just might have a case. I mean, they didn't steal the books, they bought the rights. Ergo, the author or his agent must have thought they owned them and had the right to sell them. So it isn't just RosettaBooks that thinks the electronic rights still belong to the authors but the authors do too. The titles include Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Sophie's Choice by William Stryron and Promised Land by Robert B. Parker. RosettaBooks launched its Web site offering electronic versions of 86 books last month and the day after Random House filed suit. RosettaBooks claims to have purchased the "electronic rights" to many of Random House's backlist titles. Random house claims that the electronic rights are implicit in the original publishing contracts which state that Random House has the North American rights to "print, publish and sell" their works "in book form". As electronic rights were unheard of before the mid-1990's, there is nothing in the contracts that mention "electronic rights". Random House's lawyers claim that the right to publish "in book form" means "in linear text fashion" and are therefore electronic books are included in their contracts. RosettaBooks' lawyers claim that if that were the case, then Random House would not have altered its author contracts in 1994, which now includes electronic rights. RosettaBooks claims that the new contract treats electronic rights that makes them different from the way they would be treated if they were included in the "in book form" clause. Catherine Fowler, who served as Random House's electronic-rights specialist from 1991 to 1994 submitted an affidavit agreeing with RosettaBooks' claim.

The copyright of the article RosettaBooks vs Random House Continued in E-Books is owned by Richard Loeffler. Permission to republish RosettaBooks vs Random House Continued in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.