Perkins Coie Blog Home

It is fairly settled law that copying scholarly articles to include in a coursepack for students in a university class is not fair use. E.g., Princeton Univ. Press v. Mich. Doc. Servs., Inc., 99 F.3d 1381, 1385 (6th Cir. 1996) (en banc). In a recent case, a coursepack vendor had not obtained permissions or paid royalties. It argued that nonetheless, it had not infringed, because it merely assembled a master copy of each coursepack and made it available to students, who were the ones who pressed the “copy” button on the copy machine. Blackwell Publ’g, Inc. v. Excel Research Group, LLC, __ F. Supp. 2d __, 2009 WL 3287403, at *1-*2 (E.D. Mich. Oct. 14, 2009). Denying summary judgment, the district court was unimpressed by this argument. It held that the coursepack vendor was an infringer, regardless of whose fingers pressed the “copy” button, because it assembled the master copy, maintained it, improved its quality, gave it to students to copy, owned all the copy machines and paper, and provided employees to assist the students. Id. at *4. It also held that the fair use analysis does not turn on who pressed the “copy” button and that the coursepack vendor’s use was, as in prior cases, not fair use.