Chicago Business Litigation Lawyer Blog
Some of the top publishing companies recently filed a copyright infringement suit against Audible, an Amazon subsidiary, seeking to enjoin to the audiobook company’s rollout of a new feature called “Audible Captions” which shows the text on-screen as a book is narrated. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are seven members of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), including the “Big Five” of publishing: Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins Publishers, and Macmillan Publishers.
Audible announced the new caption feature back in July and set an official rollout date close to the time when students would be returning to classes in the fall. In advance of filing the lawsuit, many of the plaintiffs sent Audible cease-and-desist letters or released public statements calling the feature “an unauthorized and brazen infringements of the rights of authors and publishers.”
In the simplest terms, Audible Captions displays the text of an audiobook to listeners in real-time while the book is being read to them. Audible generates the text in real-time using Audible’s transcription technology. According to the complaint, “Audible Captions takes Publishers’ proprietary audiobooks, converts the narration into unauthorized text, and distributes the entire text of these ‘new’ digital books to Audible’s customers.” This conversion of audio to text, the plaintiffs allege, constitutes the creation of unauthorized derivative works in violation of the Copyright Act. Continue reading ›