Authors OnLine -

US Supreme Court Judgment

So finally the matter is settled, after much sabre rattling and a few million dollars in legal fees the traditional publishers finally had to admit defeat and accept that e-books are not automatically copyrighted to them. Could have gone either way though, rather like the early days of video versus film, but on that occasion the film companies won. The difference was of course, that the property was theirs in the first place!

So what this means is that all you authors out their who have contracts with traditional publishers are now free to talk to the likes of us about putting your work 'online'. Better have a careful check of the contract first though and make sure it doesn't specifically mention e-rights - because we certainly will!