Columbia University sues over ownership of Encyclopedia Iranica
New York-based Columbia University has accused a company established by late historian Ehsan Yarshater of falsely claiming to be the copyright owner of the Encyclopedia Iranica, a scholarly resource on Persian and Iranian history.
The lawsuit, filed on Friday, August 9 at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleged that Encyclopedia Iranica Foundation (EIF), a company set up in 1990, had also claimed to be the exclusive owner of trademark rights in the name of the work and a logo.
Yarshater began to teach at Columbia in 1958 and, ten years later, founded the Center for Iranian Studies at Columbia University.
In 1972, Yarshater began work on a Persian encyclopedia of Islam in 1972, a precursor to the Encyclopedia Iranica. Seven years later, Yarshater started work on the Encyclopedia Iranica, a scholarly resource on Persian and Iranian history.
According to the university, the Encyclopedia Iranica has become the Center for Iranian Studies’ most prominent publication and is “internationally regarded as the most comprehensive account of several millennia of Iranian history, language and culture in the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia”.
The first instalment of the work was published in 1982 and, like all subsequent volumes, bore the name ‘Encyclopedia Iranica’ and was marked with a “distinctive visual design”, said the claim.
Yarshater, who established EIF reportedly to help ensure the continuation of the work by providing financial support, was the president of the company until his death in September 2018.
“Without Columbia’s knowledge, and despite EIF’s repeated public acknowledgements that it had no role in the ‘academic and technical’ aspects of the work, EIF began to list itself as the “claimant” on copyright registration filings for the work starting with volume 11 in 2003,” alleged the claim.
Columbia University said it wasn’t advised of the change EIF made in the claimant designation on the copyright registration forms and did not learn of it until December 2017.
Two years prior, EIF had requested that Columbia transfer all of its copyright ownership in the work to the company, a request the university denied.
Disruption of activities
Elton Daniel, a highly-regarded scholar of Middle Eastern and Islamic History, was appointed by Columbia in January 2017 at Yarshater’s request to serve as the centre’s interim director and editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia Iranica. Yarshater’s health prevented him from participating in the oversight of the centre at this time, said the university.
At the beginning of Daniel’s term, the Persian Heritage Foundation (a fund set up by Yarshater) was undergoing an internal reorganisation and was temporarily unable to provide funding to the centre.
This left EIF as a principal source of the centre’s funding and the increased reliance on EIF “gave rise to problems almost immediately”, claimed Columbia.
“As documented in emails from defendant to Daniel beginning in early 2017, defendant insisted that none of the Center’s funding could be used for any Center activity other than the [Encyclopedia Iranica],” said the claim.
It added that, later that year, the EIF cut funding to the center. Since then, EIF has allegedly “repeatedly disrupted” the centre’s activities, the claim said.
“Columbia investigated the recent history of the work and determined that defendant had, beginning in 2015 and without informing Columbia, unilaterally changed the copyright assignment forms that individual scholars signed when submitting contributions to the [Encyclopedia Iranica],” added the claim.
The university said that it has since confirmed with most of these authors that they didn’t intend for copyright in their contributions to be assigned to EIF.
“Defendant’s outside counsel have repeatedly threatened Columbia with legal consequences for distributing the work without defendant’s consent,” the university said.
In addition, EIF has opposed the Persian Heritage Foundation’s application for trademark registration of the encyclopedia's logo. The registration is still pending.
Finally, Columbia accused EIF of interfering with the university’s contractual relationships with third parties regarding the distribution and other use of the Encyclopedia Iranica.
According to the claim, EIF falsely informed personnel of Clarivate Analytics, the company that hosts the ScholarOne software that the centre uses to manage publication of the work, that EIF owns the work.
Columbia University has asked the court to find that EIF is not the owner of the copyright registrations or trademarks. It’s also requested that the court enter an order directing EIF to destroy the data it received from Clarivate.
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