Court Cases

On February 22, 2012, attorneys Edward White and Kenneth Elan filed a lawsuit against West Publishing and Reed Elsevier, alleging among other things that the publishers had infringed their copyrights by downloading their legal briefs and motions from the federal PACER website, ingesting the briefs into their own Westlaw and Lexis databases, and making the documents available to subscribers.

On July 3, 2012, ARL joined the American Library Association (ALA) and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), who all work collectively as the Library Copyright Alliance (LCA), to file an amicus curiae brief (PDF) with the Supreme Court of the United States in support of petitioner Supap Kirtsaeng in the case Kirtsaeng v. Wiley & Sons. On the eve of Independence Day, the LCA asks the Court to be true to the values of our country’s founders—people like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, who were both founders of libraries and great champions of library lending.

On September 20, 2005, the Authors Guild, together with Herbert Mitgang, Betty Miles and Daniel Hoffman, filed a class action lawsuit against Google for its Book Search project. According to the Authors Guild, Google was committing copyright infringement by scanning books that were still in copyright. (Google countered that their use was fair according to US copyright law.)

The case concerns the use at Georgia State University (GSU) of electronic course reserves and electronic course sites to make excerpts from academic books available online to students enrolled in particular courses. The named plaintiffs in the case are three academic publishers (Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Sage), who argued that the unlicensed posting of digital excerpts for student access almost always exceeded fair use and should require a license.

The HathiTrust is a partnership of major research institutions and libraries working to ensure that the cultural record is preserved and accessible long into the future. There are more than sixty partners in HathiTrust, and membership is open to institutions worldwide. The HathiTrust digital library is comprised of nearly 10 million scans that resulted from the Google Library Project and other digitization efforts by research libraries. 

On July 28, 2010, SkyRiver Technology Solutions joined with Innovative Interfaces to file suit in San Francisco federal court against OCLC Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) alleging numerous anticompetitive business practices and antitrust violations.

The Library Copyright Alliance (LCA) joined a coalition of public interest and technology groups in an amicus brief (PDF) written by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asking the Ninth Circuit to reject the arguments made by Universal Music Group (UMG) and affirm the lower court's decision in UMG v. Veoh. The case involves the legal “safe harbor” for online service providers hosting content on the web. The safe harbor protects online service providers from damages liability if a third party using the online service infringes copyright.

On April 12, 2010, ARL joined with other nonprofits and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in an amicus brief (PDF) in the case Viacom v. YouTube. In 1998, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) established a vital safe harbor for online service providers such as YouTube, Craigslist, and other services that allow individuals to publish and transmit content on the Internet.

In March 2011, the US Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of Golan v. Holder. The case is a challenge to the Uruguay Round Agreement Act, legislation passed in 1994, which restored copyright protection to many foreign works that had risen into the public domain in the United States but continued to be protected in their home jurisdiction. The Act was passed to bring the United States into compliance with international treaty obligations under the TRIPS agreement, which requires signatories to offer reciprocal protection of co-signatories’ works.

The Library Copyright Alliance (LCA)—comprised of the American Library Association (ALA), the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL), and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL)—filed an amicus curiae brief (PDF) with the Supreme Court of the United States on July 8, 2010, in support of petitioner Costco Wholesale Corporation in Costco v. Omega.

On August 3, 2009, ARL, ALA, and ACRL joined the Organization for Transformative Works and the Right To Write Fund in filing an amici curiae brief (PDF) asking the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to reverse the Federal District Court judge’s ruling in Salinger v. Colting.

On November 16, 2010, the Association of Research Libraries joined CREW and other public interest and nonprofit groups in filing an amicus brief (PDF) arguing that the express language of Exemption 7(C) of the FOIA, 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)(C), and the legislative intent behind the exemption point unmistakably to an interpretation that excludes any protection for so-called “privacy” interests of corporate entities. The term “personal privacy” used by the exemption to describe its reach applies exclusively to individuals, not abstract and artificial constructs like corporations.

On October 12, 2010, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), the American Library Association (ALA), and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) joined the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge in amicus brief (PDF) requesting an “en banc” review of the recent court decision concerning software licensing and the first sale doctrine.

On June 13, 2007, the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed an earlier ruling (PDF) in the case Greenberg v. National Geographic Society. This is a very important ruling for publishers who want to digitize their works. This ruling permits digital versions of the works (e.g., print or microfilm) if no changes are made to them. Greenberg, a photographer sued National Geographic for including his works in a CD-ROM compilation of all of the issues of theNational Geographic magazine. An earlier ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled against the National Geographic Society. An appeal to the Supreme Court was rejected and the case was again before the Eleventh Circuit, which on June 30, 2008, held that National Geographic's reproduction of its magazine electronically was privileged under the federal copyright statute.

On March 29, 2005, the US Supreme Court heard arguments in the case Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios v. Grokster. This is an important case to the library, education, technology, and consumer electronics communities as there are significant implications for future technological development and innovation.

On March 4, 2005, in the case of Faulkner v. National Geographic Society (PDF), the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that NGS did not infringe on the copyrights of freelance photographers and authors when it digitized their works to create a CD-ROM collection from the entire print version of the NGS magazine (from 1888 to 1996) in a searchable format.

In the October 2004 case of Lexmark v. Static Control Component, the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati overturned a lower court ruling that prohibited Static Control Component Inc. from manufacturing microchips for Lexmark ink cartridge replacements. Static Control reserve engineered one of Lexmark's toner cartridges in order to compete and create a cheaper product. The three-judge panel noted, "Lexmark failed to establish likelihood of success under the general copyright statues or under the DMCA." According to Judge Gilbert Merritt, "Congress did not intend to allow the DMCA to be used offensively in this manner, but rather only sought to reach those who circumvented protective measures 'for the purpose' of pirating works protected by the copyright statute."

In a 9-0 decision on June 30, 2004, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are "intermediaries" thus not responsible for paying royalties to performers and composers of music downloaded by the ISPs' customers. The court noted that although ISPs provide hardware and the technology required for access to the Internet and the World Wide Web, ISPs are not responsible for content, thus what their customers download.

In 2001, ARL, together with many others, including the American Library Association, the Digital Future Coalition, the Computer and Communications Industry Association, and the National Writers Union, filed an amici curiae brief in the case Register.com v. Verio. Verio extracted information from the publicly available Register.com WHOIS database for use in telemarketing. In response to this extraction, Register.com sued Verio and was successful in district court. The amici curiae brief (PDF) argues that these claims are preempted by the federal intellectual property system; the district court ruling is at odds with the Feist decision regarding facts being in the public domain; and it also raises First Amendment concerns.

On December 19, 2003, reversing the rulings of the lower court, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in favor of Verizon ( Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) v. Verizon). In a case with significant implications for users of file sharing systems, the decision stopped the RIAA from gaining access to names of individuals that the RIAA suspected of illegally downloading music from the Internet. The suits filed by the RIAA have focused on section 512(h), the subpoena provision of the DMCA, that allows any copyright owner or representative to "request the clerk of any US district court to issue a subpoena" to force an Internet service provider (ISP) to identify "an alleged infringer."

On November 17, 2003, ARL joined 17 library, public interest, and consumer advocacy organizations in filing an amicus brief (PDF) in the case of Pacific Bell Internet Services (PBIS) v. the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The RIAA has issued several subpoenas to the Internet service provider under section 512(h) of the DMCA seeking to identify the names, addresses, and phone numbers of PBIS subscribers.

On June 16, 2003, the US Supreme Court denied a writ of certiorari without opinion in the case ofBaystate Technologies Inc. v. Bowers. The decision, a disappointment to the library community, will let stand the January 29, 2003, US Court of Appeals decision that "the Copyright Act does not preempt state contract law that allows parties to impose a ban on reverse engineering."

On June 2, 2003, the US Supreme Court issued its opinion (PDF) in the case, Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. The court ruled unanimously (8-0) in favor of Dastar Corp.

Dastar used Twentieth Century Fox film footage from the 1950s that has entered the public domain to create a documentary on World War II without citing the source of all the footage. Twentieth Century Fox sued Dastar and won. The US Supreme Court has overturned that decision, ruling that Dastar did not break the law when it repackaged the public domain footage.

On January 15, 2003, the US Supreme Court upheld the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) in a landmark 7-2 ruling that came as a disappointment to the library community and other advocates of a vibrant public domain. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg delivered the majority opinion; Justice John Paul Stevens and Justice Stephen Breyer each wrote dissenting opinions.

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL), the American Library Association (ALA), the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), joined the International Documentary Association (IDA) and the WGBH Educational Foundation in an amicus brief (PDF) prepared by Anthony Falzone at the Stanford Fair Use Project, asking for the full Fourth Circuit to rehear the case of Bouchat v. Ravens and reconsider the panel’s flawed fair use reasoning.

On June 25, 2001, the US Supreme Court issued its decision in the case of New York Times v. Tasini. In a decisive 7-2 ruling, the justices upheld an appeals court ruling that the reuse of a freelance author's work on CD-ROMs and in commercial electronic databases without the author's permission constituted copyright infringement. In February 2001, ARL and ALA filed a "friend of the Court" brief (PDF) to present the library perspective to the US Supreme Court concerning the practical effects of the issues at stake in the case. The brief refuted a number of inaccurate claims and offered constructive ways to balance the rights of freelance authors, commercial electronic database producers, publishers, and the public.

In July 1999, the US Supreme Court denied certiorari, or refused to hear, two cases under appeal by West Publishing Company. By rejecting the request, the Supreme Court let stand two decisions by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in favor of Matthew Bender & Co. and Hyperlaw Inc.

American Geophysical Union v. Texaco results from a class action suit brought by six scientific publishers on behalf of other publishers registered with the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC). In July 1992, a US District judge ruled in the seven-year old copyright case that a Texaco scientist violated the US Copyright Law (Section 107) when he copied articles without providing the appropriate fee to the publishers. Texaco argued that the copying fell within fair use. The court ruled that the profit motive of the company was a relevant consideration in the analysis of the purpose of the use. They also found against Texaco in considering the amount of the work used focusing on the article as the "whole work" rather than the journal it came from. They also found that the market was affected because Texaco could have paid royalties through the CCC.