James Joyce Estate Pays $240,000 in Attorneys’ Fees to Stanford Scholar and Her Counsel in Connection With Copyright Dispute
September 28, 2009
Businesswire.com
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STANFORD, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Stanford Law School’s Fair Use Project announced today that the Estate ofJames Joyce agreed to pay $240,000 in attorneys’ fees to Stanford University Consulting Professor Carol Shloss and her counsel in connectio n with her lawsuit against the Estate to establish her right to use copyrighted material in her scholarship on the literary work of James Joyce.

This payment marks the resolution of the final chapter in the case, which sought to establish Shloss’s right to use copyrighted materials in her biography of Joyce’s daughter Lucia, titled Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake. A substantial amount of source material was excised from that book in response to threats from the Joyce Estate. Following publication of the book, Shloss sued the Estate to establish her right to publish the excised material. The parties reached a settlement regarding that issue in 2007, which permits the publication of that material in the United States.

Following that settlement, Shloss asked the Court to order the Estate to pay attorneys’ fees of more than $400,000. The Court ordered the Estate to pay approximately $326,000 in fees, but the Estate appealed that decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. In order to avoid further litigation, Shloss and her counsel agreed to accept an immediate payment of $240,000 in return for the dismissal of the Estate’s appeal.

“I’m really proud of what we accomplished here,” explained Shloss. “We vindicated my rights as a scholar, and we also demonstrated that authors and literary estates need to be careful. If they don’t pay attention to the rights of scholars, authors and researchers, they may end up paying just as the Joyce Estate did.”