For immediate release:
September 20, 2010

For more information, contact:
Jonathan Band
policybandwidth
202-296-5675
jband@policybandwidth.org

ARL Joins Non-Profit Organizations in Bouchat v. Ravens Amicus Brief

Washington DC—On September 17, 2010, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL)—along with the American Library Association (ALA), the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), the International Documentary Association (IDA), and the WGBH Educational Foundation—joined an amicus brief 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.

The case centers around a logo used from 1996 to 1998 by the Baltimore Ravens, which was later determined to infringe Frederick E. Bouchat’s copyrights. Bouchat sued and won, and the team has used a new logo since 1999. Mr. Bouchat also sued the Ravens and the NFL and asked the court for nothing less than the right to suppress every depiction of his logo, including every depiction of the Baltimore Ravens in uniforms bearing the logo from 1996 to 1998. The district court denied his request, saying these historical depictions were fair use. On appeal, however, a panel of the Fourth Circuit reversed the district court.

Falzone’s excellent amicus brief reminds the court that there is overwhelming precedent to support the Ravens’ claim of fair use. The brief makes several important points, but perhaps the most important point is that for-profit use is not fatal to a fair use claim.

The importance of this decision could be quite significant. The Supreme Court has said that fair use is an essential First Amendment protection because it ensures that the copyright monopoly is not allowed to become a limitation on vital freedoms of expression. If courts decline to apply fair use to protect something as fundamental as the right to document historical facts, they upset the constitutional balance in copyright law. The “exclusive rights” of authors and inventors were never meant to give them a license to censor history.

For more information on the Bouchat v. Ravens decision, please visit ARL’s Public Policy blog managed by Brandon Butler, ARL’s Director of Public Policy Initiatives, at http://policynotes.arl.org/.

To view the amicus brief, please click here: http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/amicus_bouchatvravens092010.pdf

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The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 125 research libraries in North America. Its mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, facilitating the emergence of new roles for research libraries, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations. ARL is on the Web at http://www.arl.org/.

The American Library Association (ALA), established in 1876, is a nonprofit professional organization of more than 65,000 librarians, library trustees, and other friends of libraries dedicated to providing and improving library services and promoting the public interest in a free and open information society. ALA is on the Web at http://www.ala.org/.

The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) is a division of the American Library Association (ALA), representing nearly 13,000 academic and research librarians and interested individuals. ACRL is the only individual membership organization in North America that develops programs, products, and services to meet the unique needs of academic and research librarians. Its initiatives enable the higher education community to understand the role that academic libraries play in the teaching, learning, and research environments. ACRL is on the Web at http://www.acrl.org/.