Fox gives up on 'Liars book' lawsuit

RUPERT Murdoch's Fox News has dropped a trademark infringement lawsuit against a US satirist after its legal action helped to turn his contentious book into a best-seller.

Dutton, the Penguin Group unit in charge of the text, said that due to heavy demand for Al Franken's book it had orders to print 510,000 copies of Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them as of yesterday, up from the original 270,000.

The book, which mocks the network, now leads Amazon.com's bestseller list, where it landed from nowhere in a matter of days thanks to publicity over the Fox suit.

The network's withdrawal of the case follows strong criticism by a federal judge on Friday, when he refused to grant Fox's motion for an order stopping sales.

Fox had charged that Franken had violated its trademarked phrase 'Fair and Balanced' by including it on the book's cover. Fox is owned by Murdoch's News Corporation and Penguin is a unit of Pearson, the media group that also owns the Financial Times.

US District Judge Denny Chin said the title was clearly a parody protected by the First Amendment and threw out an injunction aimed at halting future sales.

He described Fox's case as 'wholly without merit' and added that there was no chance readers would be misled. 'There is no intent by Franken to palm himself off as a Fox commentator,' he ruled.

Floyd Abrams, a lawyer for Franken and Penguin, said he had received court papers from Fox saying it had dropped the case. 'The decision by Fox is welcome, if overdue. It should never been brought,' he added.

A Fox spokeswoman said: 'It's time to return Al Franken back to the normal obscurity he's accustomed to.'