New Fight Breaks Out Over Digital Rights to Old Books

A legal battle between HarperCollins Publishers and a company run by one of its former chief executives is putting the spotlight on a key issue in book publishing today: Who owns the e-book rights to decades-old titles?

Two days before Christmas, HarperCollins filed a copyright-infringement suit against Open Road Integrated Media in federal court in New York, seeking to block Open Road from selling an e-book edition of Jean Craighead George's 1972 children's novel "Julie of the Wolves." Open Road, which published the e-book version last August, is run by Jane Friedman, a former CEO of HarperCollins. The lawsuit appears likely to reopen a critical issue relating to e-book rights that was thought to be resolved about a decade ago. That is, whether book contracts written before the digital age granted publishers digital rights, or whether those rights were retained by the author and could be sold to an e-publisher.