Questions & Answers on Copyright for the Campus Community

A New York Federal District Court ruled that Kinko’s Graphic Corporation infringed copyrights when it photocopied materials (including chapters of books and articles from periodicals) for sale to students as coursepacks for their university classes. The copyrighted works infringed included hardback and paperback editions of in-print and out-of-print trade and professional works as well as textbooks. The 12 copied excerpts in the case ranged from 14 to 110 pages and from 5% to 24% of the works. In addition to ruling against further photocopying by Kinko’s without permission of the copyright owners, the Court awarded the plaintiffs damages, court costs, and attorney’s fees resulting in almost $2 million. The Court’s decision in this case did not prohibit the reproduction and sale of anthologies but rather the reproduction and sale of anthologies made without obtaining proper copyright permission or meeting the criteria of the Classroom Guidelines or the statutory “fair use” provision in Section 107 of the Copyright Act.

In this case, Princeton University Press and two other publishers filed suit against Michigan Document Services, Inc., and James M. Smith for making coursepacks, without permission, that included excerpts of the plaintiffs’ copyrighted works. The copied materials ranged from 17 to 95 pages and from 5% to 30% of the original works. Ultimately a majority of the judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld a lower court ruling that the use of the copyright materials for an educational purpose does not itself constitute fair use and held MDS and Smith to be infringers. After the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the decision, MDS and Smith settled the case, the settlement providing that MDS may not use more than one page of copyrighted material belonging to one of the plaintiffs or any member publisher of the Association of American Publishers to create coursepacks without obtaining copyright permission.