On the future of e-Reserves: ‘Fair use’ decision from the 11th Circuit

Late last week the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling in Cambridge University Press et al. v. Patton, also known as the Georgia State University (GSU) case. In this case, originally filed in 2008, a group of academic publishers sued GSU for copyright infringement due to the content that professors were making available to students through the university’s e-reserves, a system managed by the library.

The district court originally decided in favor of GSU which had argued that the course e-reserve content complied with fair use standards for non-profit educational purposes. The 11th Circuit has reversed this finding and remands the case to the judge in the district court for reconsideration.

Read the 11th Circuit opinion.

A preliminary analysis of the opinion by Kevin Smith, JD of Duke University Library, can be found here.

Gary Price’s infoDOCKET contains an evolving collection of reactions to the 11 Circuit decision here.