6 ms·

I’m no lawyer, but from my perspective a more accurate headline would be “Disney owes iconic Star Wars book author 4 years of overdue royalties”.

gamblor956 6y ago
No, the more accurate headline would be the one that is currently in place (that the author is claiming that he is owed royalties). As it stands, the irrefutable evidence from the US Copyright Office is that these novelizations were works-for-hire, so ADF would never have been owed any royalties, let alone for the past 4 years, unless he had a non-standard WFH agreement which he has thus far failed to produce.
- ensignavenger 6y ago
  I agree, but I also want to point out that Disney has refused to discuss the matter with the author or the author's representatives.
  - anonymousab 6y ago
    They're being a bit more glib than that. They had sent him an offer to discuss, but that offer was 100% contingent on him signing an NDA. Since he didn't sign the NDA yet, they haven't thought of any of his communications since then as a 'response'.
    - gamblor956 6y ago
      Generally something like this wouldn't require an NDA, so it's likely that the WFH agreement includes special terms that Disney doesn't want other authors to be aware of, or older terms that are no longer present in their current-day contracts. Given that ADF was a big name back in the day, he was probably getting some generous sales-based bonuses. He claims he was getting paid through at least 2014 for the Star Wars novels, which would mean Disney was still paying him for 2 years after the Lucasfilm acquisition. That would have been about right for Disney to have had time to review all of the Lucasfilm contracts and stop payments on the ones where they weren't actually required to pay. (This isn't all that rare; at my former job we were paying $20k a year to a former employee and it wasn't until one of the new general counsels asked why that we actually looked at the contract to see why were were still paying it. It wasn't questioned until them because the company been making those payments for years, and in the scheme of things, was fairly immaterial. Ultimately, the former employee had been entitled to those payments for several years, but the contract term had long since run out. However, anyone with knowledge of the expiration date had since left the company, and their replacements just kept paying.)
- sigzero 6y ago
  That may be the case since he WAS getting the royalties before Disney snatched it up.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- anotherman554 6y ago
  Work for hire novels require royalties if the work for hire contract says they do.
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    Yes. WFH contracts can have royalties, and it's my understanding that Marvel and DC's WFH contracts all have royalty-like provisions, because their authors and artists are generally providing significant new/creative IP, but the royalties in those contracts are simply royalty-like payments that they call "participation" because they're not legally royalties. They're similar, but similar is not same. Royalty-like payments do not have the same legal force that royalties; they're enforced through the normal means of resolving contract disputes rather than through the application of copyright law. It's extremely rare for WFH novelizations of movies to provide for royalties, because authors of novelizations are generally not creating significant (if any) new creative IP; in most cases, they're simply converting a script to prose format. ADF might have such terms in his contract, since movie studios were more generous about these things back then, but he's had the power to show us this part of his contract for almost a week now and he's chosen not to. Nor, for that matter, has the SFWA, which has similarly had access to at least one of those contracts.
    - anotherman554 6y ago
      "Royalty-like payments do not have the same legal force that royalties; they're enforced through the normal means of resolving contract disputes rather than through the application of copyright law." DC did use the term royalties in their work-for-hire contract as of 2008: http://jimshooter.com/2011/09/few-more-thoughts-regarding-art-return.html/ http://jimshooter.com/2011/09/few-more-thoughts-regarding-ar... At any rate it's not clear to me what you mean by "normal means of resolving contract disputes rather than through the application of copyright law". Once you have a contract between the parties it's going to be resolved primarily as a contract dispute. It's not going to be resolved the way someone posting something on the pirate bay will be resolved. I'm not saying what you wrote is incorrect so much as I don't think it's going to make much of a practical difference whether you call it a royalty or not.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
  SFWA seems to be saying that Disney's argument is that when they bought the rights from George Lucas, the royalties didn't come along with that. It seems Disney is not asserting there are no royalties in the contract, just rather that they don't have to pay them. I assume SFWA and ADF have discussed this beyond what they are posting to twitter. Him not posting the contract to everyone on the internet seems like a weird detail to call out as a point against him.
- hobby-coder-guy 6y ago
  Why are you making stuff up?

gamblor956 6y ago

No, the more accurate headline would be the one that is currently in place (that the author is claiming that he is owed royalties). As it stands, the irrefutable evidence from the US Copyright Office is that these novelizations were works-for-hire, so ADF would never have been owed any royalties, let alone for the past 4 years, unless he had a non-standard WFH agreement which he has thus far failed to produce.

ensignavenger 6y ago
I agree, but I also want to point out that Disney has refused to discuss the matter with the author or the author's representatives.
- anonymousab 6y ago
  They're being a bit more glib than that. They had sent him an offer to discuss, but that offer was 100% contingent on him signing an NDA. Since he didn't sign the NDA yet, they haven't thought of any of his communications since then as a 'response'.
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    Generally something like this wouldn't require an NDA, so it's likely that the WFH agreement includes special terms that Disney doesn't want other authors to be aware of, or older terms that are no longer present in their current-day contracts. Given that ADF was a big name back in the day, he was probably getting some generous sales-based bonuses. He claims he was getting paid through at least 2014 for the Star Wars novels, which would mean Disney was still paying him for 2 years after the Lucasfilm acquisition. That would have been about right for Disney to have had time to review all of the Lucasfilm contracts and stop payments on the ones where they weren't actually required to pay. (This isn't all that rare; at my former job we were paying $20k a year to a former employee and it wasn't until one of the new general counsels asked why that we actually looked at the contract to see why were were still paying it. It wasn't questioned until them because the company been making those payments for years, and in the scheme of things, was fairly immaterial. Ultimately, the former employee had been entitled to those payments for several years, but the contract term had long since run out. However, anyone with knowledge of the expiration date had since left the company, and their replacements just kept paying.)
sigzero 6y ago
That may be the case since he WAS getting the royalties before Disney snatched it up.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
anotherman554 6y ago
Work for hire novels require royalties if the work for hire contract says they do.
- gamblor956 6y ago
  Yes. WFH contracts can have royalties, and it's my understanding that Marvel and DC's WFH contracts all have royalty-like provisions, because their authors and artists are generally providing significant new/creative IP, but the royalties in those contracts are simply royalty-like payments that they call "participation" because they're not legally royalties. They're similar, but similar is not same. Royalty-like payments do not have the same legal force that royalties; they're enforced through the normal means of resolving contract disputes rather than through the application of copyright law. It's extremely rare for WFH novelizations of movies to provide for royalties, because authors of novelizations are generally not creating significant (if any) new creative IP; in most cases, they're simply converting a script to prose format. ADF might have such terms in his contract, since movie studios were more generous about these things back then, but he's had the power to show us this part of his contract for almost a week now and he's chosen not to. Nor, for that matter, has the SFWA, which has similarly had access to at least one of those contracts.
  - anotherman554 6y ago
    "Royalty-like payments do not have the same legal force that royalties; they're enforced through the normal means of resolving contract disputes rather than through the application of copyright law." DC did use the term royalties in their work-for-hire contract as of 2008: http://jimshooter.com/2011/09/few-more-thoughts-regarding-art-return.html/ http://jimshooter.com/2011/09/few-more-thoughts-regarding-ar... At any rate it's not clear to me what you mean by "normal means of resolving contract disputes rather than through the application of copyright law". Once you have a contract between the parties it's going to be resolved primarily as a contract dispute. It's not going to be resolved the way someone posting something on the pirate bay will be resolved. I'm not saying what you wrote is incorrect so much as I don't think it's going to make much of a practical difference whether you call it a royalty or not.
6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
SFWA seems to be saying that Disney's argument is that when they bought the rights from George Lucas, the royalties didn't come along with that. It seems Disney is not asserting there are no royalties in the contract, just rather that they don't have to pay them. I assume SFWA and ADF have discussed this beyond what they are posting to twitter. Him not posting the contract to everyone on the internet seems like a weird detail to call out as a point against him.
hobby-coder-guy 6y ago
Why are you making stuff up?