After coordinating a suit last fall against copy shops it said facilitate the illegal copying of coursepacks, the Copyright Clearance Center is again involved in litigation.
The organization last week helped four publishers sue Los Angeles—based Westwood Copies for arranging what the coalition says is copyright infringement. The publishers—Elsevier Science, MIT Press, Sage Publications and Wylie Publications—overlap with a group that filed the earlier suit. That group, which includes Elsevier and MIT as well as John Wiley, sued Custom Copies & Textbooks, a copy shop in Gainesville, Fla., that the CCC alleges was distributing material to students at the University of Florida (News, Oct. 21, 2002).
Coursepack copying was a thorn in the side of college publishers for many years, but the group scaled down its legal efforts after a 1991 ruling against Kinko's dissuaded many copy shops from engaging in the practice. Publishing executives said they believe there has been an increase in activity, and that, in any event, monitoring has to be done regularly. "You have to keep at it. Sometimes these operations are going to think no one is monitoring and will try to make a few bucks until someone knocks on the door," said Elsevier Science general counsel Mark Seeley. "You can't rely on good cases and decisions." He said there are other shops currently under investigation by the CCC.
