Leather-bound book specialist wins huge copyright settlement
21/07/2010
Moscow-based media have said that the judge used as a basis for this amount the price of luxury, six-volume, leather-bound sets of the complete works of science fiction writer Alexander Belyayev.
Small publishing house Terra commissioned a partner in Italy to bind the sets and ordered a print-run of just 620, with each set valued at $3,760.
Rival publisher AST brought out its own editions of the books, with each volume costing only $5.20. It published more than 60,000 copies. The judge multiplied the value of the leather-bound set by the number of copies published by AST to reach the $250 million award. AST has said it will appeal but Terra’s lawyer, Viktor Abdurakhmanov, told The Moscow Times: “A musician makes a disc and sells it for $100, but pirates sell it for $2. The real damage is still $100.”
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