Course Packs and Copyrights

In a recent court case, a copy-shop owner was accused of violating copyright law when, in the preparation of “course packs”—materials photocopied from books and journals and packaged as readings for particular university courses—he copied materials without obtaining permission from or paying sufficient fees to the publishers. As the owner of five that the copying of course packs was done by a copy shop and at a profit.

Copyright law outlines several factors involved in determining whether the use of copyrighted material is protected, including: whether it is for commercial or nonprofit purposes; the nature of the copyrighted work; the length and importance of the excerpt used in relation to the entire work; and the effect of its use on the works he copied; he charged by the page, regardless of whether the content was copyrighted.

In the court’s view, the business of producing and selling course packs is more properly seen as the exploitation of professional copying technologies and a result of the inability of academic parties to reproduce printed materials efficiently, not the exploitation of these copyrighted materials themselves. The court held that copyright laws do a third party in order to obtain those same copies at lesser cost.