Bob Flaws
Blue Poppy Press
A Division of Blue Poppy Enterprises, Inc.
5441 Western Ave., #2, Boulder, CO 80301 USA
Tel. 303 447 8372; Fax: 303 246 83622; email: bobflawsftarthlink.net; www.bluepoppy.com
Jan. 8, 2001
Lloyd W. Ament
Basman Smith, LLP
111 Richmond St. West, Ste. 1400
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5H 2G4
Dear Mr. Ament,
As of today, I have received your letter of Jan. 2 and, coincidentally, had a telephone conversation with David Guttman, Ms. Lee's nephew by marriage and manager of her financial affairs. As I mentioned in my letter to you of Jan. 2, Ms. Lee has had a stroke. This has left her unable to communicate freely or clearly and her memory is not what it used to be. Nevertheless, she asserts through Mr. Guttman that she did travel to Taiwan and did study with Tong Jing‑chang. According to Ms. Lee, Dr. Tong gave her his verbal blessing to spread his work in the Western world. Mr. Guttman has ascertained Ms. Lee's full Chinese name and is forwarding that to me. I will forward a copy of it to you as soon as it arrives in my hands.
Interestingly, one of my own Chinese teachers, Dr. Ding Ji‑feng of Shanghai, told me verbally the exact same thing back in 1982 or 83, i.e., that I was his representative in the West and could freely spread his work. If one were to look on the written role of Dr. Tong's formal disciples, I doubt if my name would appear. As your client knows, being recognized as a disciple in traditional Chinese society is a very formalized affair. However, who knows what any teacher has privately said to various of their students. I am just mentioning this because I find Ms. Lee's story plausible in that something very similar once occurred to me in a Chinese medical setting.
As to your client's assertions that no such person as Miriam Lee exists, that is simply and demonstrably not true. Ms. Lee was a very well known acupuncturist in Palo Alto, CA before her retirement due to hypertension and was, in fact, instrumental in getting acupuncture legalized in that state (and therefore the rest of the U.S.). I would be more than happy to get notarized affidavits from various Californian acupuncturists attesting to Ms. Lee's existence and place in the California acupuncture community if your client so wishes.
However, it seems to me that what we need to resolve here are any specifically legal matters. The crux of the matter, as I see it, is whether or not Miriam Lee and, by extension, Blue Poppy Press has violated your client's pre‑existing copyright, and if so, what to do about this. Judging from your client's words, I am not sure if he understands the legal implications of our assertion that our book is a "new work" whose information is based on several pre‑existing sources: A) a xeroxed, spiral bound book Ms. Lee selfpublished which does acknowledge "Decker Palden" on its cover, B) a xerox copy of a Chinese language book written by Tong Jing‑chang and published in Taiwan, and C) many hours of Ms. Lee's recorded teachings. Our book was fashioned out of the information in these three sources, as described in the Preface, using Nigel Wiseman's translational terminology as it appears in English Chinese ChineseEnglish Dictionary of Chinese Medicine, Hunan Science & Technology Press, Changsha, 1995. Whether or not our book contains factual errors or whether your client likes our illustrations is legally beside the point.As of this writing, I do not have in my possession copies of the xerox reprint of either the book Ms. Lee published or Dr. Tong's book. However, I will try to get copies of these from Ms. Lee via David Guttman if possible and will be happy to forward copies of these to you as soon as I can. Meantime, it would also be helpful if your client would send us a copy of his copyrighted book so that we can determine for ourselves how similar in wording our book is to his. Given that both books are translations of the same or similar Chinese original, a certain amount of similarity in wording is to be expected.
When Blue Poppy Press agreed to publish Ms. Lee's manuscript, Blue Poppy Press assumed that Ms. Lee was acting in good faith and did have Dr. Tong's permission to translate and publish this material in English. Since Chinese conventions concerning the use of previously existing materials are very different from those here in the West (as I'm sure your client well knows), it appears that Ms. Lee may not have understood your client's copyright and its legal implications. Unfortunately, we never thought to question her more closely on this matter. However, bottom line, we are willing to come to some accommodation with your client if your client would spell out specifically what he wants, including any specific wording on errata slips, Web site errata notices, etc. It is still not at all clear to us what exactly your client would like us to do and the exact nature of his legal claim.
Sincerely,
