So I just heard from my pal gia, who is busy liveblogging at New York Anime Festival. She spent a little bit of time talking with Central Park Media's John O'Donnell and managed to pry word out of him about the company's absence at Yaoi Con and their ordeal with Libre. Here's what she said:

I only spent a few minutes at the CPM booth, and I asked about Kizuna 9. O'Donnell said he had no idea when it would be out at the moment. After a bit more chatting he talked about the Libre issue....it was a sort of impromptu interview, so I'm sorry I don't have stuff word for word! But here's the general idea.

He says that when he paid Biblos up-front for the rights to the various yaoi titles they put out, he acquired the rights for the duration of the contract and that Libre's acquisition of those rights after the demise of Biblos did not cancel that out.

Since putting up their notice, O'Donnell says Libre has not taken any action to settle the matter, and even refuses to sit down with O'Donnell or any other CPM representatives to try and work it out. Libre has not filed a lawsuit. He hopes that Libre will bring their lawyers to the U.S. so that the matter can be settled, but thinks that they are trying to deliberately harm the sales of the books until CPM's license expires so that they can license the series to another company.

As for Yaoi-Con '07, he says that probably due to the Libre issue, they were never approached to get a booth or sponsor the con, so they decided not to invest the money in a con that didn't seem to want them. He also noted that the reason why CPM has been so quiet on the matter up to now is because typically in Japan you don't take these arguments to the public-- but now he seems pretty fed up with the entire matter.

So are we, John-- so are we!

I'll be at their panel on Sunday, at which O'Donnell says the company will have a surprise-- so I'll report back then!

Thanks gia, we love you. ♥ Even if you got his name wrong and I didn't even realize and fix it until now.

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