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Random House sues RosettaBooks

© Richard Loeffler

As I reported last week RosettaBooks.com is going to be offering a large selection of contemporary "classics" by well known writers at its new web site. I complained about the price of the books compared to the price of the print edition. Well, it seems Random House, Doubleday, Bantam, Dell, Ballantine, et al (all owned by Bertelmann's) isn't so much worried about the price as the rights. Looking at the RosettaBooks web site, it appeared to me that I was reading a Dell or Bantam paperbacks catalogue from several years ago. The titles and authors were about 80% from there. RosettaBooks explained away my curiosity by saying that many of these titles existed before there was such a thing as electronic rights and that they had acquired the electronic rights from authors, estates and agents that had originally sold the rights to the various print publishers.

It seemed to make sense to me, so I didn't give it a second thought and went on to complain about the high prices. Well, it seems the lawyers at Bertelmann's caught what I had missed. Bertelsmann's claims to hold the rights to most of these books even though the electronic rights didn't exist when they were purchased. They (Bertelmann) see the electronic versions as having the same proprietary rights as any print version. As the electronic versions by their definition are exactly the same as the print version they claim to own them too.

I think I have to agree with Bertelmann's on this point. If the information in the ebook is substantially the same as the pbook then just the delivery is changed but the content is the same. If Bertelmann's bought the rights to the book when an electronic edition wasn't even thought of it shouldn't matter. It may be a hyperbole but what if the rights were bought before the invention of the photocopier? Would photocopied versions be exempt? Or copies made on a kind of paper that didn't exist when the agreement was signed?

I believe that when a publisher buys the rights to a book, they buy the content not the method of delivery. Publishers buy rights and then are free to sell off certain parts of those rights, like the right to publish the book in paperback or book club edition but as long as the publisher has the rights to a book unless it is specifically mentioned then they also have the electronic rights. Just my opinion and I may be wrong.

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