Research Guides: Copyright: Using Copyrighted Material

Getting Permission

Individual users and organizations must get permission to distribute or republish copyrighted works. The Copyright Clearance Center is one organization that faciliates the permissions process. See also, Copyright@CUNY, How to Get Permission.

Court Cases

Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, 510 U.S. 569 (1994)
Supreme Court allows rap parody of Roy Orbison song under fair use doctrine.
Lowrey's Reports v. Legg Mason 302 F.Supp.2d 455 (2004)
Jury found Legg Mason liable to Lowry's (publisher of NYSE Market Trend Analysis) for breach of contract and willful copyright infringement and awarded $19,725,270.00 in damages. The lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed amount.
Golan v. Holder, 132 S. Ct. 873 (2011)
Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of 17 U.S.C. § 104A, which restores the copyright in certain foreign works that have entered the public domain in the United States.

What is Fair Use?

Fair use allows the use or copying of a limited amount of copyrighted materials as long as the following four conditions are met:

1. the purpose is educational, not commercial, and the audience is limited to a person, a class or a group of students, i.e. not public. Allowed purposes include teaching, news reporting, criticism, scholarship and research (17 USC 107);

2. the work is published, and not meant to be consumed by one user (like a workbook);

3. a relatively small amount of a work is copied (e.g., not the whole book);

4. the material is not easily purchased at a reasonable price.

An article on fair use in the academic environment appears in a recent issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education : "Pushing back against legal threats by pushing fair use forward" (Jeffrey R. Young, May 29. 2011).

Fair Use & Copyright Compliance at Baruch

Baruch E-Reserve Guidelines
Baruch College Interactive Guide to Using Copyrighted Media in Your Courses
Copyright@CUNY
CUNY Intellectual Property Policy
CUNY policy regarding intellectual property, a broader concept than copyright. Discusses ownership of copyrightable works.

Recent Court Cases Involving Textbooks and E-Reserve

Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons 133 S. Ct. 1351 (2013)
In case dealing with sale of foreign editions of textbooks sold in the United States, Supreme Court held sale of lawfully-made copies purchased overseas were protected by first-sale doctrine. Court found first-sale doctrine applied to goods manufactured outside the United States and that Copyright Act protections and exceptions are not limited by geography.
Cambridge University Press v. Mark P. Becker, 863 F.Supp.2d 1190 (N.D.Ga., 2012).
Main issue is whether copyright fair-use doctrine allows Georgia State University (GSU) to copy and distribute to students substantial excerpts of copyrighted books via e-reserve systems without permission from or payment to the copyright owners? Cambridge University Press, and other publishers, are appealing 2012 decision, which found that some, but not all, of professors' uses of excerpts and/or chapters of copyrighted works were subject to “fair use” defense to infringement claims.Case is being followed by many academics, librarians, and publishers. Resources available at http://www.educause.edu/focus-areas-and-initiatives/policy-and-security/educause-policy/issues-and-positions/intellectual-property/georgia-state-copy.

About this guide

This guide was originally developed by librarian Ellen Kaufman who left Baruch to join the library of a major New York-based law firm. It is updated by Rita Ormsby of the Newman Library.