As noted earlier, publishers sued several organizations in the 1990s for copying newsletters and won substantial settlements.[1] And in 1999, LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae, a large New York-based law firm, purchased a multi-year photocopying license with the CCC and paid an undisclosed settlement to avoid an infringement suit brought by four publishers.[2] Also noted earlier, in 2004 a brokerage firm was held liable for nearly $20 million in damages for copying an electronic newsletter.[3]
Then we have litigation against the for-profit information brokers. In the early 1990s, the West Publishing Company, the largest U.S. legal publisher, sued several for-profit information brokers for infringement as a response to their copying and distributing the proprietary features in West’s court reporters.[4] These cases resulted in victories for West, either through injunction or settlement.
We ought not to forget litigation against copyshops for producing coursepacks for college students. The first was a successful suit against the Gnomon Corporation, which operated several stores in the Northeast. In 1980 Gnomon entered into a consent decree enjoining the company from making multiple copies of journal articles and book chapters to produce coursepacks unless they had written permission from the copyright owners, or written certification from the faculty member that the copying complied with the Classroom Guidelines, which are part of the legislative history of the 1976 Copyright Act.[5] A year later, Harper & Row brought a successful suit against Tyco Copy Service. Tyco settled the case on terms similar to the Gnomon settlement.[6]
A case that received more publicity than either Gnomon or Tyco involved a lawsuit by Addison-Wesley Publishing against New York University, several members of its faculty, and a private copyshop for creating coursepacks. The parties settled, with NYU agreeing to inform its faculty
- ↑ See infra p. 48.
- ↑ Anna Snider, Firm Settles Photocopy Charges, Nat’l L.J., Mar. 22, 199.
- ↑ See infra p. 48.
- ↑ West Publ’g Co. v. California Law Retrieval Serv., No. 93-7137 (C.D. Cal., filed Nov. 24, 1993); West Publ’g Co. v. Aaron/Smith, No. 89-CV-2693 (N.D. Ga., filed Dec. 1, 1989); West Publ’g Co. v. Faxlaw, No. 91-CV-293 (S.D. Fla., filed Feb. 12, 1991).
- ↑ Basic Books, Inc. v. Gnomon Corp., Copyright L. Dec. (CCH) ¶ 25,145, at 15,847, 1980 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 10981 (D. Conn. 1980).
- ↑ Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Tyco Copy Serv., Inc., Copyright L. Dec. (CCH) ¶ 25,230, at 16,361; 1981 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 13113 (D. Conn. 1981).
