TAA Joins Five Other Author Groups in Support of Respondents in Supreme Court Copyright Case

The Textbook & Academic Authors Association (TAA) joined with five other author groups to file an amicus brief in support of the respondents in a U.S. Supreme Court lawsuit arguing whether under the Copyright Act’s statute of limitations rule, and the “discovery accrual rule” plaintiffs in copyright infringement cases “can recover damages for acts that allegedly occurred more than three years before the filing of a lawsuit.”

The “discovery rule” means that the statute of limitations starts running from the date the infringement is discovered rather than from the date the infringement occurred. This means that even if a work was infringed 10 years ago, if I discovered it today, I would have the next three years to decide whether to bring a claim. The question in this case is: even if the infringement happened ten years ago and I discovered it today, could I still recover damages for the infringement that occurred ten years ago?

More Archival Topics From TAA’s Print Newsletter with Commentary From Long-Time Member Phil Wankat

Long-time TAA Member Phil Wankat has dug back into his TAA print newsletter archive, this time into the black-and-white early issues published between 1994 and 2010, finding more gold to share with you along with his brief commentary of the value of each article.

We will be adding these articles to the web page, “Articles from TAA Report Archives (now The Academic Author) with Commentary,” along with the other articles he shared from the TAA Report, over the next few months. The articles are organized into 12 categories, including Authors Needed, Bios, Contracts and Legal Comments, Diversity, Managing and Planning, Money, Production, Publishing first book, Recognition and Rewards, Teaching, Textbook Scholarship and Textbooks in Promotion Cases, and Writing and Writer’s Block.
The first set of articles we are sharing, in the Authors Needed category, include:

“Co-authoring a book originally written by another,” by Frank Silverman. “Look for a book that has an author who is retired, or close to retirement or, well, deceased,” says Wankat.

“Authors uneasy over Pearson deal.” “Big mergers ‘reduce the opportunities for new authors and even close the door on experienced authors,'” says Wankat.

Join the Copyright Alliance and Copyright Society for panel on ‘AI Authorship and Copyrightability’

On Tuesday, March 14 at 4 p.m. ET, the Copyright Alliance will join the Copyright Society to host a free webinar titled Exploring the Impact on Copyrightability When Creating New Works Through AI.

The panel will feature experts who will explain the different types of AI authorship under U.S. copyright law, the potential pathways for asserting copyright ownership in works created using generative AI tools, and policy issues that impact the authorship analysis—including incentivizing the use of AI technologies and protecting the rights of human authors.

Copyright Claims Board: A new option for authors to protect their copyright

The CCB is a small claims forum housed within the Copyright Office (at the Library of Congress) for a limited number of common copyright claims. The CCB was established through an act of Congress in 2020 (the CASE Act) and began to hear cases in June 2022.

The purpose of the CCB is to make it easier for individuals and organizations to pursue small dollar copyright infringement claims that otherwise are too expensive for those with limited resources.

Working on K-12 curriculum and instructional materials? A new copyright licensing solution enables use of high-quality published content

Teachers, schools, and districts are increasingly demanding higher quality curriculum and instructional materials to meet the needs of their students and remain compliant with state and local standards.

High-quality published content that is current, personalized, local, diverse, equitable, and inclusive is vital for creating these materials. Unfortunately, securing copyright permissions for such content brings licensing challenges, especially when attempting to secure these permissions on an individual basis at scale.

Publishers sue Shopify for harboring book pirates

In December of last year, five major textbook publishers filed a lawsuit against Shopify in federal district court in the Eastern District of Virginia claiming that Shopify wrongfully facilitated infringement of their copyrighted textbooks and registered trademarks by maintaining an ecommerce platform it knew to be hosting repeat textbook pirates and frustrating the publishers’ attempts to get them taken down.

The publishers are Macmillan Learning, Cengage Learning, Elsevier, McGraw-Hill, and Pearson Education. Their complaint lists more than 3,400 copyrighted works and 20 registered trademarks that have been infringed and asks for an injunction barring Shopify from further facilitating the claimed infringements, statutory damages of more than half a billion dollars, and reimbursement of plaintiffs’ attorney fees.