A federal appellate court has thrown out a class action settlement between freelance writers and online publishers and databases that archived the writers’ work without pay, saying that the pact approved by the lower court did not represent the interests of all class members.
A 2-1 panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit panel ruled yesterday in In re: Literary Works in Electronic Databases Copyright Litigation, 05-5934, that class members who did not register copyrights for their works were not adequately represented in the settlement. The majority opinion was written by Judge John M. Walker Jr., joined by Judge Ralph K. Winter.
