By Sierra Pawlak
In her October 2025 Webinar, “Copyright in the Afterlife: Estate Planning Tips for Authors”, Brenda Ulrich, an intellectual property attorney with Archstone Law, shared how authors can set up their heirs for success. She detailed how copyright differs from other assets in an estate plan, how best to divide up your literary works, and how to appoint a literary trustee or executor. For more, you can listen to her presentation here.
10/8 TAA Webinar: What Textbook & Academic Authors Need to Know About Filing Claims in Bartz v. Anthropic
Educational/textbook and university press/academic authors represent almost half of the close to 500,000 works infringed in the class in Bartz v. Anthropic. While the court approved 50-50 default splits between authors and publishers of trade and university press works, the court approved a separate claims process for determining the split between educational/textbook authors and publishers.
Join TAA Executive Director Kim Pawlak and Intellectual Property Attorney and TAA Board Member Brenda Ulrich on Wednesday, October 8 from 2-3 p.m. ET for an informational meeting about what textbook and academic authors need to know about filing claims in the settlement: “What Textbook & Academic Authors Need to Know About Filing Claims in Bartz v. Anthropic.” Register. Open to members and non-members.
Bartz v. Anthropic Copyright Case: A Landmark Settlement for Textbook & Academic Authors. What’s next.
As the only association devoted solely to supporting and advocating for the interests of textbook and academic authors, TAA represents not only its nearly 3,600 author-members, but thousands more. In the historic ruling for U.S. copyright holders in the case of Bartz v. Anthropic, in which the court awarded $1.5 billion to authors and publishers whose books were pirated by Anthropic to train its large language models (LLMs), educational/textbook and university press/academic authors represent almost half of the close to 500,000 works infringed in the class.
At a September 25, 2025 hearing, attended by TAA Executive Director Kim Pawlak, TAA Board Treasurer and mathematics textbook author Michael Sullivan, and TAA Board Member and Intellectual Property Attorney Brenda Ulrich, the court granted preliminary approval of the settlement agreement proposed by the plaintiffs, which outlined the claims process for authors and publishers.
What Does Your Contract Allow Your Publisher to Do?
In her 2025 TAA Virtual Conference session, “Can My Publisher Really Do That?”, Brenda Ulrich, an intellectual property attorney with Archstone Law, said that authors often ask her questions that boil down to “can my publisher do that?”, but what they’re really asking is, “what does my contract allow my publisher to do?”.
“At the end of the day, the rules of your relationship with your publisher come down to what’s in the contract,” she said. “That’s why it is really important to carefully negotiate a contract from the start and make sure that from the start you understand what it means. That way, when things get dicey and divisive, the contract is the road map that you, the publisher, your lawyer, and ultimately, perhaps even a court, will look at to determine whether you or your publisher can ‘do that.’”
She shared some of the most common questions she hears from authors. Here are two:
Cengage Seeking to Engage with Authors Regarding New Digital Royalty Allocations Post-Lawsuit
By Kim Pawlak, TAA Executive Director
Following a $20.9 million settlement of a class action lawsuit over allegedly underpaid author royalties, Cengage is now seeking to engage with its authors regarding new Digital Royalty Allocations (DRA) of royalties from digital courseware relating to their titles. Catherine Schnurr, the publisher’s director of product strategy and operations, sent letters to Cengage authors in March, asking them to contact their Author Relations Managers to schedule a meeting to discuss how the publisher has calculated their DRA in the past and how they will calculate it going forward.
In the letter, Schnurr states: “Your active participation in this process is valued and will help ensure your voice is heard, and your past efforts and future contributions are recognized.” She also said that Cengage is “now focused on strengthening our close partnership with authors,” and “intends to be as transparent as possible” about past and future DRA calculations. She added that “depending on your individual circumstances, the new calculation could result in an increase or decrease to your DRA.”
What Authors Need to Know About Cengage Class Action Lawsuit Settlement
On November 24, 2024, the federal district court in New York granted preliminary approval to a $20,990,000 settlement of claims of royalty underpayment by Cengage Learning, Inc., in a long-running lawsuit brought on behalf of Cengage textbook authors by the class action law firm Susman Godfrey. There is a January 22, 2025 deadline for any authors wish to opt out of the class or to object to the settlement.
Cengage authors have asked us various questions about the settlement. Zick Rubin, attorney at the Archstone Law Group and long-time TAA member (zrubin@archstonelaw.com), has provided some answers.