The battle over digital rights is brewing again. As e-books become more popular and more profitable, authors and publishers seem unable to agree on who actually owns the electronic rights to backlist titles.

The New York Times sums up the issue in a recent article:

Backlist titles, which continue to be reprinted long after their initial release, are crucial to publishing houses because of their promise of lucrative revenue year after year. But authors and agents are particularly concerned that traditional publishers are not offering sufficient royalties on e-book editions, which they point out are cheaper for publishers to produce. Some are considering taking their digital rights elsewhere, which could deal a financial blow to the hobbled publishing industry.

Last Friday, Random House sent a letter to literary agents stating that it believes it holds digital rights to the “vast majority” of its backlist catalog. As noted in a Publishers Weekly article, the publisher asserts that the letter was not intended to be confrontational. Random House spokesperson Stuart Applebaum explained that the purpose of the correspondence was to let the agents know that the company “is the right publisher for their clients’ e-books.”

Literary agent Nat Sobel told the Wall Street Journal that he doesn’t agree with Random House’s belief that it owns those electronic rights. Sobel said, “[…] I don’t think anybody else will either. […] Contracts 20 years ago didn’t cover electronic rights. And the courts have already agreed with this position.”

In 2001, Random House sued RosettaBooks, an e-book publisher, over digital editions of books from William Styron, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert B. Parker and others. Random House’s attempts to get a preliminary injunction against Rosetta Books were curtailed by the Federal Southern District Court in Manhattan and the Second Circuit appellate court. The case did not go to trial and was settled out of court, where Rosetta was given a license to release 51 titles in e-book form.

An article from Daily Finance suggests that the major publisher may consider legal action again: “Random House may decide that another costly lawsuit is necessary, because the stakes in digital rights today are far higher than they were less than a decade ago.” Another literary agent, Richard Curtis, makes a good point in the aforementioned Wall Street Journal article, however:

“Someone would have to have a lot at stake to be willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to go up against Random House in court,” he said. “I don’t know whether anybody will feel they want those rights so badly they are willing to spend like that to prosecute a claim right up to what could be the Supreme Court.”

The Authors Guild, which has more than 8,000 members, issued a statement on Tuesday which disputes Random House’s claims: “Publishers acquire only the rights that they bargain for; authors retain rights they have not expressly granted to publishers. E-book rights, under older book contracts, were retained by the authors.”  The statement also encourages authors to be patient and cautious in releasing their digital rights.