Long-running freelance suit against publishers settled for $11 million

A class action lawsuit led by freelance writer Heather Robertson against the several of Canada's largest media publishers is over -- at last. It has been reported that the Globe's parent company, CTVglobemedia Inc., Thomson Reuters Canada Inc. and The Gale Group Inc. have agreed to pay $11 million to settle the matter, without admission of wrongdoing.

The outcome is that thousands of freelancers whose work was put into various electronic databases after 1979 could share in the settlement. Details of that, of course, will have to be worked out.

The case at its simplest, concerns what now seems like a quaint and naive practice whereby, on a handshake, most freelancers sold articles to newspapers for one time use, retaining second and subsequent rights. Starting in the '70s and '80s, papers like the Globe(then owned by Thomson) began storing these articles in various databases and reselling the works without compensation to the writers. Robertson sued, became the surrogate for all other freelancers, and the case was on.

Ms. Robertson, 67, said that the settlement was "fair and reasonable" and she is glad she pursued the case for all these years. "It has really made people aware of the importance of our intellectual property and of getting fair compensation for it," she said [in a report in the Globe].

The media fought the case vigorously -- hence the 13 years -- but in the end accepted that the settlement was a cost of putting the whole distasteful business behind them. That's what the Globe's vice-president general counsel Sue Gaudi effectively said:

"We are pleased to have achieved this settlement agreement and agree that it is a fair one. It is primarily a historical matter from the days before The Globe and Mail entered into written contracts with our freelance contributors. We value our relationships with our freelancers and are happy to move on."

The reason they can be so sanguine about it is that, these days, freelancers at the Globe and most other large companies are generally required to sign written contracts. That may be the saddest part of this whole business. Having at last established the rights to control their own copyrights, all-but-powerless freelancers are now required to relinquish them, and many do.

The Robertson case had several twists and turns, including a 2006 Supreme Court of Canada ruling that said that if a newspaper reproduced its entire, formatted page for resale -- say on a CD-Rom -- that no extra compensation was due to freelancers. But if the text was resold in databases in text form, that was not within the rights owned by the publisher.

Related posts:

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• What's what in the Heather Robertson case?
  
• Robertson wins groundbreaking freelance suit after more than a decade of struggle
  
• Decision to come, at last, in Robertson suit against Globe
• Robertson vs Globe gets to high court
• Coming to final arguments