Publishers win reversal of ruling in case involving Georgia State

A federal appeals court has reversed an Atlanta judge’s ruling on a first-of-its-kind copyright infringement lawsuit brought on behalf of three academic publishers against Georgia State University.

Two years ago a judge in the case, which has garnered national attention from publishers and academia, ruled mostly in favor of the Atlanta college. The new ruling, issued on Friday by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, sends the case back to a lower court judge in Atlanta for reconsideration.

Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press and Sage Publications initially filed suit against Georgia State in 2008, accusing the Atlanta college of “massive” copyright violations for allowing professors to download and reproduce portions of published works for class materials without getting the publishers’ permission or paying licensing fees.

The case involved the application of the fair use standard, which allows for limited use of copyrighted material without consent from the copyright holders.

In the initial ruling, Senior U.S. District Judge Orinda Evans found that Georgia State has violated copyright law in five of the cases, but that the excerpts copied by the college in more than 90 other cases were allowed. Evans also ruled that in most instances colleges are allowed to copy 10 percent of a book or one chapter of a book with more than 10 chapters without being sued.

The publishers appealed that ruling, and the appeals court found the reasoning behind the initial ruling “flawed.”

“The three publishers involved reluctantly undertook this action to help clarify important questions of copyright in a digital world,” Oxford University Press said in a statement about the court’s ruling. “We welcome (Friday’s) decision as it will help to protect the intellectual property rights of authors and publishers who produce high-quality educational materials on which colleges and universities depend. We have at no time sought damages or to extend copyright protections through this case, merely wanting to bring Georgia State’s practices in line with those at other universities.”