11th Circuit Rules On Georgia State Fair Use Case - Copyright Librarian

"The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals issued its ruling today in Cambridge University Press et. al. v. Patton - otherwise known as 'the Georgia State case.' This is a case in which academic publishers (Cambridge UP, Oxford UP, and Sage) sued a public university for use of excerpts from books in online e-reserves and course websites. (Lawsuits funded in part by the ostensibly-neutral Copyright Clearance Center.) Previously, the District Court ruled that most of the uses in question were fair use. On appeal, it didn't look like things were necessarily going well for academic users. Indeed, today's ruling reverses the lower court's rulings, vacates some results of the ruling, and remands the case back to the lower court for reconsideration in light of the corrections made in today's ruling. But given the possibilities contemplated after oral arguments, (and heck, given the concurring opinion attached to this ruling) things definitely could be worse! ..."