From: ANTHONY WATKINSON <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 09:08:57 +0000

I have not been following this but I am amazed that a publisher like
Duke (which seems to make a point of how scholar friendly it is and
how different from commercial publishers) should go where these
commercial publishers usually do not go and take legal action against
a group of scholars.

Anthony


From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 16:06:08 -0500

For those you can't access the article, this was my comment:

> Based on just the information provided here, it would seem that the Association would have the option of setting up a new journal under a different name, say, The Journal of the Social Science History Association, and continuing to publish just as it has in the past, but with a different publisher. The Association would apparently own the copyright in the content of all past issues, even if it couldn't publish new content in a journal called Social Science History. Duke U.P. would seemingly have the option of organizing a new editorial team to run its journal under that title, but one wonders who among social science history scholars would be willing to participate under such strained circumstances. To an outsider, this all seems like a tempest in a teapot, not worth the considerable legal fees it will take to settle.

Sandy Thatcher


> From: Jim O'Donnell <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2014 06:51:34 -0700
>
>> From Chronicle of Higher Education this week, a livelier and more
>
> lawyered-up than usual quarrel about a publishing contract:
>
> http://chronicle.com.proxy.library.georgetown.edu/article/Dispute-Over-Who-Will-Publish/145307/
>
> The article is behind paywall, but the core of the issue is this:
>
> "The dispute pits the Social Science History Association against Duke
> University and its press, a leading publisher of academic journals. In
> June 2012, the association told Duke it wanted to end their
> longstanding agreement for the press to publish the group's journal,
> Social Science History.  Duke balked, and in the spring of 2013 the
> association sued the university for copyright infringement in federal
> court in North Carolina. Now the fight has even spilled over into the
> trademark realm, with Duke separately contesting a move by the
> association to trademark both its name and the name of its journal."
>
> The legal dispute is about contract language, but the underlying
> question is the creation and management of intellectual property and
> its value in a partnership between a learned society and a publisher
> and what rights and expectations are created.
>
> Jim O'Donnell
> Georgetown