Author demands interview is removed from Amazon

Travel writer Bill Bryson has demanded an e-book, which re-published a 20-year-old interview with him, is removed from sale on Amazon after claiming it amounts to copyright infringement.

The book is based on a 1994 interview with the US-born author conducted by an Australian journalist, Mike Gerrard.

Though a magazine article was published shortly after the interview, Gerrard decided to re-print parts of the discussion to form a short e-book.

The book, Bill Bryson: The Accidental Traveller, is 8,000 words long and Gerrard had included a disclaimer informing readers it was a re-print of a previous interview.

However, Bryson’s lawyers then contacted Amazon demanding the book be removed, stating that he only gave permission for the piece to be published once.

Bryson, who wrote to the author through his publisher Transworld Publishers, also claims he is the sole owner of any words he spoke during the interview.

Gerrard, who is seeking legal advice, was quoted on the website for travel exhibition, World Travel Market, as saying that if that were the case, no journalist could ever quote anything said to them.

“There would be thousands of breaches of copyright every day, in newspapers and magazines, in the radio and on TV, and online,” Gerrard said.

“The law in this area is a little unclear,” said Jonathan Reichman, partner at Kenyon & Kenyon LLP in New York, who said that joint ownership law may come into play.

“The better-reasoned view is that the copyright in the entire interview, including questions and answers, is owned jointly by the interviewer and interviewee,” Reichman told WIPR.

“Under the law of joint copyright ownership, each co-owner has the right to use it without the other co-owner’s prior consent, subject to certain limitations and restrictions.”

Transworld told WIPR it was “surprised and disappointed” that Gerrard was unwilling to accept the “reasonable and legitimate” requests of a copyright owner.

“The facts are that Bill Bryson agreed to be interviewed by Mr Gerrard in 1994 on the understanding that the interview would be published contemporaneously in a specialist literary magazine,” it added.

Reichman said, “Bryson’s position is as much a contractual one as a copyright one.”

“He is saying to Gerrard ‘I own my words, I granted you a limited copyright license to use them for one specific publication, you have exceeded this license by using them for a different publication, and by exceeding the license, you have committed copyright infringement’.”

Reichman added: “What this shows is that, for any interview that goes beyond a few snippets, for example the typical brief quote you see in a newspaper article, and becomes an extensive discussion, the parties should have a clear agreement and understanding up front on the scope and parameters of the permitted use.”

“Very few courts in the US have looked at this specific question, and it is almost always going to require a very fact-specific inquiry to answer,” said Hillel Parness, partner at Robins Kaplan Miller & Ciresi LLP, in New York.

“In some cases, courts have rejected claims of copyright where the claimant did not reduce the words to writing, where the claimant spoke with the expectation that his words would be publicly-disseminated, and where the court did not think that the words in question embodied the requisite level of intellectual investment to be worthy of copyright protection.

“Other courts, by contrast, have allowed cases like this to proceed when the claimant alleged that the defending party obtained access to the text illicitly.”

Parness added: “Based on the press reports, this dispute may present the more nuanced question of whether Gerrard exceeded the authority presumably granted by Bryson.”

Amazon did not respond to requests to comment on the take-down notice.