From: Kevin Smith <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 11:18:23 +0000

The decision to bring a lawsuit is always made, of course, by the
plaintiff, in this case the Social Science History Association.  I think
we must assume that they believed that the litigation would be worth the
cost to them.  And if we assume that, there appears to be only one way
that there could be a sufficient payoff to justify those costs -- if the
SSHA is ultimately able to sell the journal to a commercial press and
collect tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits.  To do that,
it probably needs to be the original journal title that is sold to Wiley,
Sage or whoever, since that carries the "goodwill" that is a big part of
the journal's value (its "brand").  Of course, that scenario implies that
the cost of subscriptions for libraries will increase by orders of
magnitude, as has happened with other society journals that are shopped
around in this way.

By the way, this is speculation on my part; I have no inside knowledge
about the lawsuit and no involvement in its defense.  I base this
speculation solely on what I read in the press reports.

Kevin L. Smith, M.L.S., J.D.
Director of Copyright and Scholarly Communications
Duke University Libraries
P.O. Box 90193
Durham, NC 27708
[log in to unmask]