Windsor Library settles in wrongful dismissal suit

A controversial lawsuit brought against the Windsor Public Library Board by its former CEO, Brian Bell, has been settled out of court. Windsor Star columnist Anne Jarvis criticized the settlement with Bell, which she pegs at more than $80,000: “I’d say Christmas has come early for Brian Bell.”

In 2008, Bell was fired without severance when it came to light he had been articling at a Windsor, Ontario, law firm while on paid sick leave from WPL. Bell, citing wrongful dismissal, sued the board for $500,000. Jarvis notes that the library’s education incentive program had already paid out nearly $36,000 towards Bell’s business and law school tuition. Bell now practices law in Toronto and specializes in employment and labour issues.

The columnist explains that the library opted to settle the suit because it had “mishandled the firing,” “breached Bell’s privacy,” and “couldn’t find Bell’s file or correspondence between the board and Bell.”

“Whatever,” writes Jarvis. “All I know is I’m forking out yet more money for Brian Bell.”

Plagiarism case heads to court as Canadian authors file lawsuit against Zhang, Penguin Canada

The controversy surrounding Ling Zhang’s novel Gold Mountain Blues continues to escalate, as a group of Canadian authors are now taking their allegations of plagiarism to court. On Thursday, Wayson Choy, Sky Lee, and Paul Yee filed a lawsuit against Zhang’s publisher, Penguin Group Canada, for copyright infringement, the Toronto Star reports. The trio of authors are seeking $6 million, plus $1 million each in punitive damages from Pearson Canada, Penguin Canada’s parent company. Also named in the suit are Zhang, for “purposely copying multiple elements” from the plaintiffs’ published works, as well as Nicky Harman, the book’s U.K.-based English-language translator who conducted a review of the plagiarism allegations for Penguin.

Gold Mountain Blues was originally published in 2009 in China, where it garnered literary awards, became a bestseller, and was optioned for film and TV. It was released on Oct. 8 in Canada and 11 other territories. According to the Star:

The suit says the Canadian authors now face “significant potential losses” when they are eventually published in China because “it will appear to Chinese readers in China that the plaintiffs have copied portions of Gold Mountain Blues” when the authors were long-published before the book came out. The suit says the authors have identified more than 50 key examples of original elements that have been substantially copied.

The Star has previously published a list of similarities between Gold Mountain Blues and works by Choy, Lee, and Yee, provided by the plaintiffs’ legal counsel, May Cheng. The list highlights comparable plot points, character backgrounds and dynamics, and historical settings.

On Oct. 3, Choy, Lee, and Yee sent a letter to Penguin Canada requesting a publication delay to allow for an independent review into the allegations. Author Denise Chong reiterated the request, raising concerns around the similarities between her novel The Concubine’s Children and Zhang’s. Days later, Penguin released the novel as they claimed to be satisfied by the results of Harmon’s internal review.

Shortly after the letter was made public, Zhang issued a statement in which she claims Gold Mountain Blues to be the product of years of first-person research and field trips, combined with the shared history of the Chinese diaspora in Canada. The author, who was born in Hangzhou, China, and moved to Calgary in 1986, defended her work again on Sunday in a Q&A with the Star’s Tony Wong. In the interview Zhang touches on her inspiration for the novel and the feedback she has received from readers, and re-asserts the claim that she has not read any of the titles she is accused of appropriating, which include Choy’s The Jade Peony, Lee’s Disappearing Moon Café, and Yee’s Bone Collectors and Tales from Gold Mountain. She admits to having read Yee’s Ghost Train and Chong’s Concubine’s Children and lists both titles in the bibliography at the back of the book:

If my memory serves me correctly (as I read the two books a while ago), Ghost Train is an illustrated children’s book and Concubine’s Children is a memoir of a family story, both wonderful and inspiring. Gold Mountain Blues is a multigenerational epic novel of 522 pages. The three books are vastly different other than sharing a portion of common history, with mine covering a longer span of more than 130 years. Ghost Train and Concubine’s Children are both great books which I enjoyed very much. Each of the three books is a unique work of art by its own right.

The allegations of plagiarism against Zhang originated in the Chinese-language blogosphere and caught the attention of  Canadian media back in February.

East Coast author files lawsuit against Warner Bros.

A Nova Scotia sailor and writer is suing Warner Bros. for allegedly plagiarizing his novel, Fandango’s Gold, for their 2008 Matthew McConaughey/Kate Hudson vehicle Fool’s Gold.

In a statement of claim filed in federal court last week, Lou Boudreau maintains that writer-director Andy Tennant’s screenplay shares “uncanny” similarities with Boudreau’s book, written in 1999. Fandango’s Gold, based on the author’s real-life experience as a diver and fisherman, was registered with the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia and published in 2006 by Tiller Publishing, a Maryland-based press specializing in nautical books.

The claim doesn’t specify the amount Boudreau is seeking in damages, though he says he’s entitled to the same cut afforded to the screenwriter of the film, which made over $300 million.

From Halifax’s The Chronicle-Herald:

In his statement of claim, Boudreau says his manuscript ended up in the hands of movie industry insiders, particularly in California, because he spent about five years between 1999 and 2004 promoting it.

In an interview… Boudreau said Fandango’s Gold starts out as the tale of a Spanish sailor on a galleon laden with gold sailing for Spain. It runs into a hurricane and is wrecked on a remote atoll in the Caribbean. The crew carries the treasure ashore and hides it in an underground cave with a passage to the sea.

[...]

In his statement of claim, Boudreau lists pages of similarities between his book and the film. They include the two romantic leads looking for the galleon’s treasure, the female lead being taken hostage by the bad guys, and the lead characters finding the treasure in an underground cave and swimming through an underwater tunnel to safety.

Boudreau is wading into risky waters – many an author has taken on big U.S. production companies and filmmakers, and the results haven’t necessarily been favourable. (Remember when Rebecca Eckler took on Judd Apatow in 2007?) In the end, Boudreau says he has to stand up for his work and his “moral rights.”

“I’m the little schooner captain from Cape Breton and they are Warner Bros. Therein lies the great inequity,” he told The Chronicle-Herald. “It’s important for me because I wrote this book. It was very personal to me.”

Daily book biz round-up: world’s biggest book; Thompson at the Vancouver Sun; and more

Today’s book news:

• Frankfurt Book Fair kicks off with unveiling of world’s biggest book (which doesn’t look all that big to us)
• FBF to stay in Frankfurt at least until 2022
• New Ken Follett and James Patterson titles cost more in digital than in hardcover
• Hunter S. Thompson applied for a job at the Vancouver Sun!
• The Millions raises a glass to the Hardy Boys
• Laura Miller looks at book-killing lawsuits

Harry Potter and the … Adventures of Willy the Wizard?

When you’re richer than the Queen, you’re bound to attract some money-hunting crazies. J.K. Rowling and her publisher Bloomsbury  are rejecting “unfounded, unsubstantiated, and untrue” plagiarism claims from the estate of author Adrian Jacobs, which has filed a lawsuit accusing Rowling of borrowing ideas for her Harry Potter series.

The lawsuit claims that the fourth novel in Rowling’s series (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) copied elements from Jacobs’ 1987 book The Adventures of Willy the Wizard – No. 1 Livid Land. According to the suit, some of these similar elements include a wizard competition and wizards using trains as a mode of transportation. From the CBC:

“Both Willy and Harry are required to work out the exact nature of the main task of the contest, which they both achieve in a bathroom assisted by clues from helpers, in order to discover how to rescue human hostages imprisoned by a community of half-human, half-animal fantasy creatures,” the suit says.

In its defense, Bloomsbury described Jacobs’ book as “a very insubstantial booklet running 36 pages, which had a very limited distribution. The central character of Willy The Wizard is not a young wizard and the book does not revolve around a wizard school.” A statement released yesterday also added that Rowling “had never heard of Adrian Jacobs nor seen, read or heard of his book Willy The Wizard until this claim was first made in 2004, almost seven years after the publication of the first book in the highly publicized Harry Potter series.”

Court ruling doesn’t faze author of Harry Potter encyclopedia

You’ve got to hand it to Steven Vander Ark: the guy’s got chutzpah. In September, a Manhattan judge ruled against Vander Ark in a lawsuit launched by mega-selling author J.K. Rowling over a proposed Harry Potter encyclopedia, which Vander Ark was set to publish. The encyclopedia was a print version of the author’s … er … encyclopedic fan website. The judge in the case ruled that publication of the book would do irreparable harm to Rowling as a writer (read: it might cost her money in lost earnings). The book was permanently blocked from publication, and the judge awarded Rowling and Warner Bros. Entertainment $6,750 in statutory damages, which is probably the amount that Rowling lays down for lunch these days.

It appears, however, that Vander Ark is uncowed. Notwithstanding the September court ruling, the CBC is now reporting that plans to publish the encylcopedia, albeit in a modified form, are going ahead. The Lexicon: An Unauthorized Guide to Harry Potter Fiction and Related Materials will appear on January 12, 2009. The book is to be published by RDR Books.

“We learned a lot at the trial about what was acceptable, what would follow the fair use guidelines,” said the 50-year-old Vander Ark, a former school librarian.

“That was not clear before. There was no law on the books that made it clear what was acceptable and what wasn’t,” he added, saying he spent five or six months revising his book – originally slated for release in November 2007.

“Coming out of the trial, I had a much better idea of what should go into the book.”

One can safely assume that Vander Ark is not referring to stills of Daniel Radcliffe’s full-frontal nudity in the recent Broadway production of Equus – this probably stretches the definition of “related materials” – but the only indication of what the revised volume might contain comes from RDR publisher Roger Rapoport, who is quoted  as saying the new version features “a lot more critical commentary, which means more analysis.”

No word yet as to whether Rowling, who once upon a time praised Vander Ark’s site for its comprehensiveness, will take further legal action, or whether she’ll just go ahead and unleash the Dementors on his ass.

Bookmarks: Twilight tourism, a nonprofit press, and more

• Patrick Ness’s first book for children, The Knife of Never Letting Go, wins the Booktrust teenage prize
• Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight causes a tourism boom in Forks, Washington
• Is Obama Book Club the newest craze?
• A mother sues her judge daughter for the daughter’s claims of childhood abuse in her memoir, Ugly
• Massachusetts-based author founds a “Robin-Hood style publishing model” with non-profit publishing house Concord Free Press

Google, publishers settle book-scanning suit

Google will pay $125-million to settle a class-action lawsuit with The Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers over its book-scanning project.

As part of the agreement, Google will expand its Book Search program to include online access to copyrighted books, out-of-print books, and materials from major U.S. libraries. It will also create a Book Rights Registry to compensate authors and publishers for material accessed online.

From the Google blog:

What makes this settlement so powerful is that in addition to being able to find and preview books more easily, users will also be able to read them. And when people read them, authors and publishers of in-copyright works will be compensated. If a reader in the U.S. finds an in-copyright book through Google Book Search, he or she will be able to pay to see the entire book online. Also, academic, library, corporate and government organizations will be able to purchase institutional subscriptions to make these books available to their members. For out-of-print books that in most cases do not have a commercial market, this opens a new revenue opportunity that didn’t exist before.

The Authors Guild and five members of the AAP sued Google in 2005 for using its “technology and clout” for massive-scale copyright infringement.

U.S. court rules print-on-demand services not liable in defamation cases

A fight between two high-school cheerleaders has resulted in an American court ruling that print-on-demand services are not liable in defamation lawsuits. (Sounds like a plot twist on Gossip Girl…)

The two cheerleaders, Ms. Calcagni and Ms. Sandler, battled over a boy they both liked and Calcagni allegedly spray-painted hateful graffiti near Sandler’s home. After she was convicted of a hate crime, Calcagni’s family hired a freelance writer to tell their side of the story, which they published using Amazon.com’s BookSurge print-on-demand service, a kind of 21st-century version of a vanity press. Sandler’s family sued BookSurge for defamation, but the suit was thrown out when BookSurge was deemed to have had “negligible involvement” with the authors of the book. MediaShift reports:

Traditionally, book publishers could be held liable for defamatory statements in their books under the theory that they exercised some form of control over the books’ contents. But online print-on-demand companies typically provide printing and distribution services only, and do not perform the traditional editing, fact-checking and marketing functions associated with other publishers. Sandler v. Calcagni appears to be the first case in which someone has argued that a print-on-demand company should face traditional “publisher” liability.

The court decided that BookSurge had no editorial input into the book’s contents, and therefore could not be held responsible for anything libellous or defamatory. It was found that the service acted more as a mass copier than a publisher, which would imply more active involvement with the process of preparing the book for press.

There won’t be an appeal, since the two parties subsequently settled their differences out of court.

Which leads Quillblog to wonder, why all this acrimony? Calcagni and Sandler are cheerleaders: couldn’t they just settle their differences in the good ol’ fashioned Hollywood manner, with a cheerleading competition? Bring it on!

J.K Rowling wins lawsuit; no HP Lexicon to be published

Harry Potter really is the boy who lived – on and on, in lawsuits pitting J.K. Rowling against a now former fan.

In the latest Rowling-related news, a federal judge blocked publication of The Harry Potter Lexicon, citing that it would cause Rowling “irreparable injury” as a writer.

Steven Vander Ark, who operates the Harry Potter Lexicon website, planned to publish the reference guide through Michigan publishing house RDR Books. In 2007, Rowling sued RDR to halt publication of the Lexicon through Vander Ark’s website. Rowling and her publisher were awarded $6,750 in statutory damages.

While the HP Lexicon may be blocked, Vander Ark is already planning his next project — a memoir entitled In Search of Harry Potter, which will chronicle his travels to locations similar to those described in Rowling’s novels. No word on whether he will travel via Floo network or Nimbus 2000.