a finding that the EIF owns neither a copyright nor an exclusive trademark right in the encyclopedia. EIF countersued alleging that Columbia, as well as Brill and Prof. Elton Daniel, breached EIF's copyright in the encyclopedia, infringed, diluted, and counterfeited its trademarks, converted EIF property, and committed various acts of unjust enrichment and unfair competition. On July 31, 2020, the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York granted a temporary restraining order against Columbia, Brill and Prof. Daniel, enjoining them through October 8, 2020 from publishing additional fascicles. EIF also sought a preliminary injunction against the defendants, but such relief was not entered by the court. Columbia and Brill subsequently published fascicle XVI/6 on October 19, 2020. As part of the dispute, there are now conflicting accounts as to the current state of the Encyclopædia Iranica. While Columbia has published fascicle XVI/4 through XVI/6, covering topics between “Kešaʾi Dialect” and “Khorsan XIV”, by EIF's count volume XVI only covers topics falling alphabetically between KA and KE. EIF considers fascicles XVI/4 through XVI/6 “counterfeit fascicles”. Reception Reputation In a review of Volume III, Richard W. Bulliet calls Encyclopædia Iranica "not just a necessity for Iranists [but] of inestimable value for everyone concerned with the history and culture of the Middle East". Ali Banuazizi, though, notes that its focus is on Iran "as perceived, analyzed, and described by its most distinguished, mainly Western, students". In 1998, the journal Iranian Studies devoted a double issue (vol. 31, no. 3/4) to reviews of the encyclopædia, coming to 700 pages by 29 authors on as many subjects. Professor A. Banuazizi, praised that the encyclopaedia "will be judged as the most significant contribution of our century to the advancement of Iranian studies as a scholarly enterprise". Many foundations, organizations, and individuals have supported Encyclopædia Iranica. The encyclopaedia has been sponsored since 1979 by the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as the American Council of Learned Societies, Union Académique Internationale, Iran Heritage Foundation, and many other charitable foundations, philanthropic families and individuals. Criticism On March 25, 2007, the Associated Press released a news report about Encyclopædia Iranica, claiming that it is "U.S.-backed". Encyclopædia Iranica published an official response, saying the report was "inaccurate and libelous", that while the National Endowment for the Humanities supports the encyclopedia, the Endowment is "an independent federal agency whose many projects are reviewed and decided upon by