Publishers Win Reversal of Court Ruling That Favored ‘E-Reserves’ at Georgia State U. - Publishing - The Chronicle of Higher Education

"How much copyrighted material can professors make available to students in online course reserves before they exceed the boundaries of educational fair use? That’s the essential question at the heart of a long-running copyright-infringement lawsuit that has pitted three academic publishers against Georgia State University. The answer matters not just to the parties to the case, Cambridge University Press et al. v. Carl V. Patton et al., but publishers, librarians, and professors at many other institutions. It’s already been more than six years since Cambridge, Oxford University Press, and SAGE Publications sued Georgia State for copyright infringement. And the latest round of legal action guarantees that the case will drag on a while longer before it produces a reliably precedent-setting answer, if it does. On Friday, in a setback for the university, a federal appeals court reversed a May 2012 ruling that mostly favored Georgia State. In a 129-page decision, a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit sent the case back to the U.S. District Court in Atlanta for further consideration. It also vacated Judge Orinda D. Evans’s decision to award injunctive relief and legal costs and fees to the university ..."