HarperCollins Publishers, the publisher of Sarah Palin's forthcoming book titled "America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith and Flag," has filed a lawsuit against Gawker Media for leaking unauthorized excerpts from the book, which is being released next week.

Noting that HarperCollins believes that the unauthorized reprinting of pages from Palin's new book constitutes a blatant infringement of copyright, the publisher said that before suing Gawker, it had sent a cease and desist letter to the company, which paid no heed to the letter.

As such, HarperCollins said that it had to take legal action against Gawker to stop the infringement as well to protect its legal rights in the content of the book.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Manhattan on Friday, seeks to prevent Gawker from what HarperCollins has termed as "further copyright infringement." In addition, the publisher also wants Gawker to deliver back the source material so it can be obliterated. Furthermore, HarperCollins is also seeking financial damages.

The filing of the lawsuit by HarperCollins led US District Judge Thomas Griesa to issue an order that instructs Gawker to remove the excerpts, and cease "from continuing to distribute, publish or otherwise transmit pages" from Palin's book.

Prior to the lawsuit, Palin noticed that Gawker had posted excerpts from her book online; and tweeted: "The publishing world is LEAKING out-of-context excerpts of my book w/out my permission? Isn't that illegal?"