NEW YORK (Reuters) - In the latest dispute over ownership of copyrighted works duplicated on the Internet, Random House (dossier) sued a publisher of electronic books Tuesday for selling computerized versions of eight Random House texts.
The suit alleges that RosettaBooks copied works by "enormously popular Random House authors" William Styron, Kurt Vonnegut and Robert B. Parker without the permission of the world's largest English-language publisher. Little RosettaBooks sells e-books, texts distributed in electronic format that can be read on a computer.
Random House, which plans to publish its own e-book editions of the Styron and Vonnegut titles, said it filed the suit in federal court in Manhattan after RosettaBooks failed to comply its demand that the books be removed from its list of offerings.
The lawsuit follows recent rulings against companies that distribute copyrighted works through the Internet without permission. Earlier this month, a federal appeals court in California ruled that Napster (dossier), the wildly popular online song swap service, could be held liable for copyright infringement.
AUTHORS' BACKING CITED
But Arthur Klebanoff, a principal of RosettaBooks, said the dispute with Random House differed greatly from the Napster case because Vonnegut, Styron and Parker had signed on with RosettaBooks' electronic publishing venture.
"We are not pirates," he said. "The talent is on our side."
"(Random House is) wrong, and we have hired David Boies' law firm," Klebanoff said. Boies was involved in the high-profile Microsoft (MSFT) antitrust and 2000 presidential election cases.
Random House's suit, which seeks unspecified damages, says the publisher -- a division of German media giant Bertelsmann AG (dossier) -- has a core agreement with its authors granting it, "for the term of the copyright, the exclusive right to publish and sell the works contracted for in book form."
The agreements also have provisions prohibiting writers from authorizing certain adaptations of their books without Random House's permission, the suit says.
It further alleges that RosettaBooks has spent no money to develop and popularize the literary works and seeks "only to free-ride on the investment Random House has made."
VAST AMBITIONS ALLEGED
Random House said that while RosettaBooks' offerings were still "modest," with fewer than 100 e-books available, "its plans are anything but." It said the electronic publisher had boasted of planning to amass "the best backlist titles of the 20th century," offering some 20,000 titles.
"It is evident that RosettaBooks plans to skim this cream of modern literature," disregarding the rights of publishers that made great investments in marketing and selling the works to the public, the suit alleges.
Besides competing with the paper versions of the books, RosettaBooks' "purloining" of its most successful titles will, if not stopped, "hobble" Random House's own new e-book business, according to the suit.
It says RosettaBooks has copied the Random House works, in multiple digital formats, onto computer servers and is offering them for sale through its Internet site. The suit says that when consumers buy the books for $8.99 each, the books are downloaded to desktop or laptop computers.
The suit says the copyrighted Random House works available from RosettaBooks are Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five," "Cat's Cradle," "Player Piano" "Breakfast of Champions" and "The Sirens of Titan" and Styron's "The Confessions of Nat Turner" and "Sophie's Choice."
It quotes RosettaBooks as saying Parker's "Promised Land" will be available soon.
Copyright 2001, Reuters News Service
