Bookstores exempt from law on autograph authentication

State lawmakers have exempted bookstores from a requirement that sellers of items that carry their creator’s autograph include a certificate guaranteeing that the signature is authentic.

Legislation excluding bookstores from the certification requirement followed a lawsuit by a Bay Area bookseller. AB228 by Assemblyman Todd Gloria, D-San Diego, passed both houses without a dissenting vote and Gov. Jerry Brown signed it Thursday. The law takes effect immediately.

A law passed in 1992 required dealers in autographed sports memorabilia to authenticate the signatures or face financial penalties. With backing from consumer advocates, film studios and police chiefs, who said there was widespread evidence of forged signatures in the memorabilia market, legislators expanded the requirement, as of this year, to all sellers except pawnbrokers and online merchants.

But a co-owner of the Book Passage stores in San Francisco, Sausalito and Corte Madera filed suit in May, claiming the law was overbroad and would stifle book-signing by imposing needless record-keeping requirements.

The plaintiff, Bill Petrocelli, said his stores host authors at more than 700 book-promotion events each year and sell tens of thousands of autographed books annually, at no extra charge. Neither the store nor the author make a profit from the signings, his lawyers said, and the same requirements could be imposed on a private citizen who owned an autographed book and decided to sell it.

Gloria said organizers of the annual California International Antiquarian Book Fair that was held in Oakland in February reported that several outof-state booksellers withdrew because of the certification requirement.

AB228 narrows that requirement to apply only to sports and entertainment collectibles, and expressly excludes books, manuscripts, correspondence, art work and decorative objects. It also raises the minimum price of items requiring autograph certification from $5 to $50.

The change is “a major victory for freedom of expression,” said Petrocelli’s lawyer, Anastasia Boden of the Pacific Legal Foundation.