[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Oh, please. How is Open Road publishing a version without clearing or securing the rights first any less "high-handed?"

You're making the assumption that they didn't.

The 2nd comment to the Publisher Weekly article, made by Robert Gottlieb who is apparently part of an author's agency which has had dealings with both HC and OR, says:

I have seen the general Open Road agreement and the author normally warrants that he/she has the right to enter into the publishing agreement with Open Road.

Now maybe the author was mistaken when she said yes, she could assign them the rights, or maybe her lawyers were overly optimistic in interpreting her contract, but Open Road Media did go and secure them as best they could before proceeding.

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Yes, writers should beware... that contracts might obligate them to actually do what they agreed in the contract.

If anything, among the less desperate authors, it's probably going to severely curtail any such further vague assignation of assumed-future-media-which-might-be-invented "rights" which will probably be henceforth explictly spelt out to the letter with limitations, because it's pretty clear that if you give publishers* an inch, they'll try and take a mile even if they have to end up with scorched earth** because of it.

And that'll probably end up being a good thing. At least all the parties involved will know exactly where they stand.

* This is not an attitude exclusive to publishers, unfortunately.

** More quotage from Mr. Gottlieb:

So if Harper has the ebook rights as they claim then what happens if the author and they can't agree on a royalty for ebooks?

I have a similar issue with Harper in the UK for a Trident author where we can't come to terms on an ebook royalty and Harper is blocking the author from exploiting the rights elsewhere. Because of this behavior Trident has placed Harper UK on the bottom of our submission list.