I will post more frequently until we get this done. I will
also post information relevant to A and B claims.
First an unpleasant development. But first about numbers I
report. They are rough estimates and shouldn’t be relied upon as anything else,
and also considered somewhat unreliable. For instance, review indicates I understated
total value of A and B directed objections. Looks like total of those is about
$3.1 million and total of all objections is more like $3.5 million. For A and B
that’s challenges against about 40% of the value of all A and B and the
Databases are yet to present their objections (due in about one month). Challenges
don’t mean invalid but they do mean that the AB counsel have to analyze and
respond to the challenges.
The development. There is now an explanation about
the large number of publisher objections that they didn’t publish a claimed
article. It doesn’t necessarily explain all, but probably a large number, and
it is astonishing. In 2006 they found themselves looking at tens of thousands
of claims that named publishers whose
works were, so far as they knew then, not on databases, so not eligible. But they observed that many of
these appeared to be mistakes by the claimant about the publisher’s name, or
shorthand versions of a publisher’s name. So they undertook to rename these
publisher names to correct it to what they thought was the intention and to
also have the effect of making the work eligible. Here are three examples I was given last week:
Wash Post to The Washington Post; Dayton Daily News
(Ohio) to Dayton Daily News;
Modern Maturity to ARRP Modern Maturity. Those seem like
reasonable interpretations.
However, there is some evidence that the
process resulted in changes more substantial, so that the claim was sent to a
publisher different than what the claimant submitted or intended. Among the
evidence is research I’ve done showing that claims sent to such and such Law
Review, were submitted to by the claimant to go to such and such Review. These
were frequently reviews on literature, music, poetry etc. The name changing
exercise inserted “Law” before Review sending the claim to the wrong publisher.
Law review are generally eligible, some small literary or specialty reviews may
not be eligible.
There were still publishers identified in
claims that didn’t appear eligible (even after this name changing exercise) and
the claimants for these received a notice and opportunity to show that the
publisher’s articles did get on databases. In some cases they could show that
is was on a database and eligible. The problem now is the ones that had a name
change and have been rejected, deserve that same opportunity if the original
name appears ineligible, and that’s a new, unanticipated, process and related
delay.
