Fergus Cassidy

Icing on the cake yesterday for author Carol Shloss in her long-running copyright case against the estate of James Joyce.

After a ten-year battle with the estate, Shloss established her right to publish material related to a book she wrote called Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake.

Yesterday the US District Court ruled on an application by Shloss for costs and fees. Shloss' legal team had argued that  "the best way to deter the Estate of James Joyce's repeated and unrepentant bad actions is to award attorney’s fees to Shloss".

The court granted the motion for attorney fees and costs.

Commenting on the ruling, Anthony Falzone of the Stanford Law School, which represented Shloss, said that the "amount of fees to be awarded is still to be determined, but we hope this demonstrates that inadequate respect for fair use's critical role in scholarly inquiry and free expression can have substantial and serious consequences". 

THE Joyce copyright case rumbles on. Following the settlement agreed last month between Carol Shloss (below), Stanford professor and author, and the Estate of James Joyce, Shloss filed a motion before the US District Court for "award of attorneys' fees and costs".

The US Copyright Act, unlike most other legislation, provides that the court "…may award a reasonable attorney's fee to the prevailing party as part of the costs". 

The new motion declares that since Shloss has established her right to publish the material at issue free from copyright liability, the lawsuits which she took "furthered the purposes of not just the Copyright Act, but scholarship and free speech itself".

Therefore, the "Court should award Shloss costs and reasonable attorneys’ fees in an amount according to proof".

Among several arguments put forward by the Shloss legal team is that the Estate of James Joyce have "misused their copyrights for years, have improperly sought to vindicate privacy interests by use of copyrights, have sought to cut off inquiry into literary and historically significant events by the misuse of their copyrights…".
 
The motion concludes that "the best way to deter the Estate of James Joyce's repeated and unrepentant bad actions is to award attorney’s fees to Shloss".  

AT 2.45am today, I read the following in the online edition of the Irish Times:

"Irish literary buffs have been blocked from viewing dozens of previously unpublished excerpts from James Joyce's notebook writings and family correspondence, which went online at the weekend, the Joyce estate has confirmed.

"The estate insisted that all non-US computers be blocked from accessing the material online, following a settlement of a bitter legal dispute between the Joyce estate and a Californian English professor."

In less than five minutes,  I was able to access the excerpts and secured a screen grab souvenir (below) of my travels. As a bonus, I've proved that I'm not a literary buff!

http://www.lucia-the-authors-cut.info/

Useful links: 
http://www.publicproxyservers.com/faq.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_list

THE lead attorney for the James Joyce estate, issued a press release last Thursday in response to the settlement of the civil action taken by Professor Carol Shloss. (See previous posts here and here)

Maria K Nelson said that the trustees of the estate were "delighted with the successful resolution of the litigation brought by Professor Shloss" and that the outcome was a "clear victory for our client on all major issues".

The press release continued:  “From the outset of this dispute, we sought to define what specific material Prof. Shloss wanted to publish and the context in which she would publish it, as well as to have the copyrighted material belonging to our clients respected. This settlement agreement provides both.

"It makes no mention whatsoever regarding the ‘fair use’ claim, nor does it make any new law regarding ‘fair use’ or copyright misuse".

“The trustees of the Estate are pleased that this litigation has now been resolved in a way that vigorously protects the copyrights they own and respects the private lives of their family members.”

THE trustees of James Joyce's estate failed last week to halt a 'fair use' copyright challenge being brought against it. The dispute revolves around research for a book, published in December 2003, called Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake and a planned supplementary website.

From 1988 to 2003, Carol Shloss (left), a Joycean scholar and an English professor at Stanford University, conducted research throughout the US and Europe on the creative impact of Lucia Joyce's relationship with her father.

During 1994, the estate of James Joyce became aware of the research and when asked two year later for help with the book, Stephen Joyce – a grandson of James – gave a "definitive no".

In August 2002, Joyce confirmed to Shloss that his position had not changed. He pointed out that: "Over the past few years we have proven that we are willing to take any necessary action to back and enforce what we legitimately believe in".

Three months later, Joyce wrote to Shloss' publisher saying that its claim of fair use "sounds like a bad joke or wishful thinking" and asked the publisher to "kindly bear in mind that there are more than one way (sic) to skin a cat".

The book (below) was published in December 2003, in heavily edited form. More than 30 pages (about 10%) were cut. Shloss said she then intended to place her full research notes on a website as an electronic supplement.

Fair use
On the 13 June 2006 (to coincide with Bloomsday), the Stanford Centre's Fair Use Project took up her case and filed a law suit against Stephen Joyce on four counts, one of which claimed that the Joyce estate had misused its copyrights.

Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford Centre lawyer involved in the case, said he believed it was the first case to accuse a literary estate of "copyright misuse". Anthony Falzone, director of Stanford's Fair Use Project, said: "We want an order by the court that holds that Shloss's website does not infringe on the estate's copyright. Because, among other things, it is protected by fair use".

Late last year, the estate of James Joyce applied to the US District Court for a motion to dismiss Shloss' case. In its filed opposition to the motion, Shloss' lawyers stated: "The Estate of James Joyce has waged a fifteen-year campaign of obstruction, intimidation and threats designed to thwart Stanford University Professor Carol Loeb Shloss in her efforts to write a biography of Lucia Joyce that explores (among other things) Lucia’s unacknowledged influence on, and contribution to, her famous father’s literary work".

In its ruling delivered last week, the US District Court in California denied the motion to dismiss the case and Shloss can now proceed with her case against Joyce's estate.