Judge (mostly) favors Georgia State in fair-use copyright infringement case

Our friends at the Cofrin Library flag this one to your attention: In a landmark ruling over many issues not previously litigated to this degree in the digital era, Judge Orinda Evans rejected many of the claims in a suit by three prominent publishers against Georgia State University. In 94 of the 99 instances cited by the publishers as copyright violations, the judge ruled that Georgia State and its professors were covered by fair use. At the same time, however, this particular judge imposed a strict limit of 10 percent on the volume of a book that may be covered by fair use (a proportion that would cover much, but by no means all, of what was in e-reserves at Georgia State, and probably at many other colleges). And the judge ruled that publishers may have more claims against college and university e-reserves if the publishers offer convenient, reasonably priced systems for getting permission (at a price) to use book excerpts online. The lack of such systems today favored Georgia State, but librarians who were anxiously going through the decision were speculating that some publishers might be prompted now to create such systems, and to charge as much as the courts would permit.
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The UW-Green Bay Cofrin Library has a guide on copyright.
For copyright questions, feel free to contact Marlys Brunsting.