John Wiley & Sons and two units of Elsevier Science filed a complaint against Kessler-Hancock Information Services Inc., a document delivery service in Davis, Calif., and its president and owner, Brian Hancock, in federal district court in Boston for copyright infringement.
According to the suit, which is being coordinated by Copyright Clearance Center Inc. (CCC), a licensing agent for both publishers, Kessler-Hancock filled orders for copyrighted materials and even collected the copyright fees, but did not return them to the copyright holders.
"This is a longstanding problem we've had with Kessler-Hancock," said Bruce Funkhouser, v-p of business operations at CCC, which represents 10,000 rights holders in the U.S. "We have records going back for about a dozen years on this subject. This is actually a case where the publishers said, we have a problem here, and our response was that we haven't heard anything from Kessler-Hancock in many years." He emphasized that copyright infringement continues to be a primary concern for CCC. "Kessler-Hancock may have been the most egregious, but they're by no means the only document deliverer that doesn't always report and doesn't always pay," noted Funkhouser.
Hancock told PW that he regards the Elsevier/Wiley complaint as part of Kessler-Hancock's internal problems and termed it "a difficult and tragic situation." He laid the blame on former partner Greg Kessler, with whom he started the company in 1989. In 1995, Kessler sold his shares to Hancock, and left the firm. In recent years, he returned as a paid employee who was given carte blanche over company finances. In mid-September, Hancock claims to have contacted the Davis Police Department and accused Kessler of credit card fraud and draining company funds after being notified by his bank that the company's payroll was about to bounce.
"It was never our intention to defraud a publisher," said Hancock, who anticipates that other publishers may step forward and accuse Hancock-Kessler of nonpayment of copyright fees. "Elsevier isn't likely to be the only one. We have hundreds of copyright letters that go out all the time."
Neither Hancock nor Kessler has filed a response to the complaint.
