"We wrote a real book, working with a real publisher, distributed to real bookstores and sold to real people for a realistic standard royalty," Mr. Gingrich said.

Mr. Gingrich's work, on the other hand, was accepted and published by an established house, St. Martin's Press, for standard royalties, which generally run 10 to 15 percent.

The complaint says the standard royalty for an author is between 10 and 20 percent of the cover price, as against the 55 percent that Mr. Wright received.

It was decided that the standard itself does not infringe their patents, making the standard royalty free.

In contrast, the standard digital royalty from mainstream publishers is 25 percent of net proceeds.

Instead, the labels pay their artists a standard royalty for each song accessed by a fan, as they would for a CD sold.

His novel Death in the Life of All the Eyes On Earth was brought out by a small but prestige press which paid standard royalties.

Assuming Sendak received the standard royalty, he earned $274,200 on that edition in the last year.

The second reason is that in practice the industry has worked out an understanding of a more or less standard royalty for licensing the patents.

Public performances of a published work, for instance, were allowed without the author's consent, but were subject to the payment of the standard royalties.