Supreme Court To Consider Quashed Tasini Settlement on December 5
Andrew Albanese -- Library Journal, 12/2/2008 1:00:00 PM
Nearly one year after the Second Circuit Court of New York rejected (2-1) a 2005 settlement agreement in the landmark Tasini case, the Supreme Court will on Friday, December 5, consider whether to review that decision, with much on the line. If the Court decides to hear the case, the settlement has a fighting chance of survival, and will get a hearing in front of the Supreme Court, the second time the Court will have heard arguments related to the long-running case. If they decide to decline to review the Second Circuit’s decision to deny the settlement, it will be officially dead—opening the door to potential chaos in the database world, as databases may be forced to pull articles for which they do not have rights or face a wave of individual lawsuits from authors. Or, so says petitioner Reed Elsevier.
In its brief to the Court, Reed Elsevier, listed on the document as lead plaintiff, maintains first and foremost that the Second Circuit's decision to deny the settlement on jurisdictional grounds was simply wrong. Second, Reed Elsevier’s brief suggests that this settlement may be the last, best chance for peace in the database world. “No purpose will be served by waiting for further cases to percolate through the court of appeals,” the brief states, adding that “if the panel’s ruling stands, the opportunity for a comprehensive settlement and resolution…will be irretrievably lost.” In practical terms, that means that “authors will remain uncompensated,” and “many of the nation’s leading online archival databases will remain permanently degraded.”
The pending decision is yet another moment of drama connected to 2001 New York Times v. Tasini case. In ruling on an appeal lodged by ten freelance writers who challenged the merits of the settlement, the Second Circuit ruled that copyright law did not give them jurisdiction to approve a settlement that included damages for writers who did not register their copyrights. Notably, should the case come before the Court, both the plaintiffs and respondents, in this case the settlement’s objectors, will argue that the Second Circuit decision should be overturned.
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