Elsevier Science, MIT Press and John Wiley & Sons File Copyright Infringement Suit Against Custom Copies, Inc.Business Editors DANVERS, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 11, 2002 Copyright Clearance Center Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) is a not-for-profit U.S. company based in Danvers, Massachusetts, that provides collective copyright licensing services for corporate and academic users of copyrighted materials. Coordinates Claims Against Gainesville, Florida Gainesville is the largest city and county seat of Alachua County, Florida.GR6 Gainesville is home to the University of Florida, the largest university of the State University System of Florida and the third-largest university in the United States. Coursepack Producer Three major publishers of scientific, technical and medical materials today The Materials Today is a scientific journal concerning material science and technology. It was is published by Elsevier. External links
The publishers' complaint, filed in federal district court in Gainesville, alleges that Custom Copy produces coursepacks for sale on the campus of the University of Florida University of Florida is the third-largest university in the United States, with 50,912 students (as of Fall 2006) and has the eighth-largest budget (nearly $1.9 billion per year). UF is home to 16 colleges and more than 150 research centers and institutes. at Gainesville, without authorization from the copyright holders. Coursepacks are inexpensively bound collections of excerpts copied from books, journals, and other printed materials. The excerpts are required reading for college and university courses. Teachers designate what materials to copy but the copy shop cannot reproduce and sell them without permission from the rightsholders. The suit accuses Custom Copies and Roberts of knowingly failing to get permission. "When a coursepack producer engages in mass photocopying of rightsholders' materials for its own profit, without clearing rights as so many other coursepack producers properly do, that constitutes large-scale copyright infringement Noun 1. copyright infringement - a violation of the rights secured by a copyright infringement of copyright plagiarisation, plagiarization, piracy, plagiarism - the act of plagiarizing; taking someone's words or ideas as if they were your own . It severely harms both the creators and the publishers of those materials," said Mark Seeley, vice president and general counsel of Elsevier Science. The matter is being coordinated by Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC CCC A very speculative grade assigned to a debt obligation by a rating agency. Such a rating indicates default or considerable doubt that interest will be paid or principal repaid. Also called Caa. ), the world's largest licenser of text reproduction rights and a licensing agent for all three publishers. CCC facilitates the reproduction of copyrighted works by providing licenses and permissions to many coursepack producers around the nation, including private copy shops, college and university print centers, and other users of copyrighted materials. In exchange, copyright royalties are collected and then distributed to the appropriate publishers, authors, or other rightsholders. "We process hundreds of thousands of requests from thousands of coursepack producers each year for the production of photocopies of copyrighted works, and a large portion of them can be copyright-cleared in a matter of seconds," said Frederic Haber, general counsel of CCC. "Rightsholders who seek to make the permissions process as convenient as possible use CCC to license the transactions. All the infringed materials named in this suit were available for permissions through CCC." Richard S. Rudick, Wiley's senior vice president and general counsel, said, "Coursepacks have become an integral part of the teaching experience, supplementing textbooks and other original materials. They are also an important revenue source for rightsholders who deserve just compensation for use of their intellectual properties. We intend to continue our ongoing compliance activities and will pursue through court action, as necessary, instances of infringement. By undertaking compliance activity, we defend our copyrights and help maintain a level playing field See net neutrality. for those organizations that do comply with copyright law." Rebecca McLeod, journals manager of The MIT Press said, "Respect for copyright is important to progress in the sciences and the arts. If publishers, authors and other creators are not fairly compensated for reuse of their work, incentive to produce new works may be stifled. We take very seriously copyright compliance by those who use our works." About Elsevier Science Elsevier Science, Inc. is a U.S.-based unit of Elsevier Science (www.elsevier.com), headquartered in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The company is the world's leading scientific, technical and medical information provider and publishes over 1,400 journals as well as books and secondary databases. It is a member of the Reed Elsevier PLC group (www.reedelsevier.com), a world-leading publisher and information provider. Reed Elsevier PLC is owned equally by Reed International PLC (NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange : RUK RUK Reserviupseerikoulu (Hamina, Finland, Reserve Officers' School) RUK Are You Kidding? ) and Elsevier NV (NYSE: ENL Noun 1. ENL - an inflammatory complication of leprosy that results in painful skin lesions on the arms and legs and face erythema nodosum leprosum Hansen's disease, leprosy - chronic granulomatous communicable disease occurring in tropical and subtropical ). About The MIT Press The MIT Press is the only non-profit university press in the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. whose list is based in science and technology. Founded in 1937, The MIT Press is a leader in publishing in many frontier areas of biological and physical science, as well as in other areas for which Massachusetts Institute of Technology Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at Cambridge; coeducational; chartered 1861, opened 1865 in Boston, moved 1916. It has long been recognized as an outstanding technological institute and its Sloan School of Management has notable programs in business, itself is famous (including architecture, computer science, economics, cognitive science cognitive science Interdisciplinary study that attempts to explain the cognitive processes of humans and some higher animals in terms of the manipulation of symbols using computational rules. and environmental science). The MIT Press maintains a complete catalogue of its publications at its website at http://mitpress.mit.edu. About Wiley Founded in 1807, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., provides must-have content and services to customers worldwide. Its core businesses include scientific, technical, and medical journals; encyclopedias, books, and online products and services; professional and consumer books and subscription services; and educational materials for undergraduate and graduate students and lifelong learners. Wiley has publishing, marketing, and distribution centers in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, and Australia. The company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) World's largest marketplace for securities. The exchange began as an informal meeting of 24 men in 1792 on what is now Wall Street in New York City. under the symbols JWa and JWb. Wiley's Internet site can be accessed at www.wiley.com. About CCC Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., a not-for-profit organization, is the world's largest licensing agent for text reproduction rights and the provider of many licensing services for reproducing copyrighted materials in print and electronic formats. The company was formed in 1978 to facilitate compliance with U.S. copyright law. CCC currently manages rights relating to over 1.75 million works and represents more than 9,600 publishers and hundreds of thousands of authors and other creators, directly or through their representatives. CCC-licensed customers in the U.S. number over 10,000 corporations and subsidiaries (including 92 of the Fortune 100 companies), as well as thousands of government agencies, law firms, document suppliers, libraries, academic institutions, copy shops and bookstores. CCC can be found on the World Wide Web at www.copyright.com. |
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