Report: “Publishers Escape Fee Award as GSU E-Reserves Case Finally Ends”

From Andrew Albanese at Publisher’s Weekly:

After more than 12 years of litigation, Cambridge University Press et al v. Patton et al, known as the Georgia State University e-reserves case, has finally come to a conclusion. And while the plaintiff publishers once again were deemed by the court to have lost the closely-watched copyright suit, the plaintiff publisher’s financial backers—the Association of American publishers and the Copyright Clearance Center—dodged a major financial bullet as the court declined GSU’s bid to be awarded attorneys’ fees.

In a 14-page final order in the case, filed on September 29, Judge Orinda Evans declared GSU to be the prevailing party after finding the plaintiff publishers succeeded in establishing copyright infringement in just 10 of 99 claims brought to trial. But in light of recent rulings—most notably the Supreme Court’s 2016 ruling in another publishing-related case, Kirtsaeng v. Wiley—Evans opted not to order the plaintiffs to pay GSU’s attorney fees, reversing an earlier decision.

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Filed under: Awards, Companies (Publishers/Vendors), News, Publishing