Copyright, Fair Use & the Library

Columbia University Libraries. Site includes permissions forms, publication agreements, and fair use checklists.

Stanford University Libraries

created by Georgia Harper, the Scholarly Communications Advisor for the University of Texas at Austin Libraries and former Senior Attorney and manager of the Intellectual Property Section of the Office of General Counsel for the University of Texas System.

Putting teaching materials on the web doesn’t necessarily promote public knowledge

Cornell University

University of Minnesotaa

American Association of University Professors

This case centers around the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. Congress upheld that they can make changes to the Copyright Law as time goes on. Eldred and his supporters believed that works should fall into Public Domain after the end of the intitial term of copyright protection. Eldred lost the case but went on to become one of the founders of Creative Commons.

This case centered around works in the public domain. Golan v. Holder was about the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. This agreement allows works , regardless of where they are created, to be treated as the copyright in the country they are being published or performed in regardless of the nationality of the creator but no creator will have a longer copyright in another country than he/she has in their own country. There were works that we had allowed into public Domain that did not belong there by this agreement. The Uruguay Round Agreements Act had us remove these works from the Public Domain and professor Golan and many academics, performers, and educators lost. Think about how this could have affected your research.

Cambridge and Oxford University Presses, and Sage Publications charged Georgia State with placing articles on e-reserves in a way that violates the publishers' copyright. The courts agreed with the plaintiff on 5 of 99 alleged infringements. This case supports the 'fair use checklist' if the usage is 10% or less of the entire work.