MAIN NEWS HEADLINES
November 20 – November 27, 2008 Edition
Judges Gives
Google Settlement
Preliminary Okay
NEW YORK, NY (Authorlink News, November 18, 2008)Federal Judge John Sprizzo on Friday gave tentative approval to the $125 million Google settlement with the Association of American Publishers and Authors Guild, according to a report by Publishers Weekly. As a result, a series of steps can now be taken by attorneys to send notices of the terms of settlement to all publishers and authors.
Final approval is now set for June 2009. The original settlement was announced October 28. Authorlink has been running a series of articles on details of the arrangement. See:
Publishers Prepare To Adjust Royalties To Google Market (Part 3 in a Series) Experts Explain Google Settlement In Greater Detail
Authorlink Analysis (Update, Clarification, Part 2 in a series) Google Settlement Has A Few Unseen Wrinkles for Authors
Authorlink Analysis (Part 1 in a series)
According to Wikipedia, The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (S.D.N.Y.) is the federal district court whose jurisdiction comprises the following counties: New York (Manhattan), Bronx, Westchester, Putnam, Rockland, Orange, Dutchess, and Sullivan. The United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York represents the United States in civil and criminal litigation in the court. The current United States Attorney for the district is Michael J. Garcia. Courthouses are located in Manhattan and White Plains.
The court shares geographic jurisdiction over New York City with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, which manages Kings (Brooklyn), Queens, and Richmond (Staten Island) counties, along with Nassau and Suffolk on Long Island.
The Southern District is one of the most influential and active federal district courts in the United States, largely because of its jurisdiction over New York’s major financial centers. The large number of complex cases tried in SDNY and an unusually aggressive style of litigation combined with the overall power and prestige of this district caused legal commentators to joke that S.D.N.Y. stood for the "Sovereign District of New York."
Judge Sprizzo received a B.A. from St. John’s University in 1956 and an LL.B. from St. John’s University School of Law in 1959. He was nominated to the court by Ronald Reagan on July 29, 1981, to a seat vacated by Charles H. Tenney, confirmed by the Senate on September 25, 1981, and received his commission on September 28, 1981. He assumed senior status on January 1, 2000.
