Cambridge University Press, et al. v. Becker, et al., 08-cv-1425 (N.D. Ga. 2016)
On August 26, 2016, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and Sage Publications (jointly “Cambridge”) appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, asking the Court to review the judgment entered on July 27, 2016, along with previous orders and rulings in the case which was originally filed in 2008.
Cambridge filed its case on April 15, 2008, for what it deemed “systematic, widespread and unauthorized copying and distribution” at Georgia State University. Cambridge named various high-level and administrative employees at Georgia State University, along with members of the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia (jointly “Georgia State”) as defendants in the case. Cambridge claimed Georgia State violated its copyrights in a significant number of works by allowing copyrighted material to be uploaded to websites hosted by Georgia State, and then allowed students to access, copy and distribute “many, if not all, of the assigned readings for a particular course without limitation.”
The case was appealed to the Eleventh Circuit once before, which issued a lengthy opinion on October 17, 2016, analyzing 75 separate instances of alleged copyright infringement. In that appeal, the Eleventh Circuit reversed the district court’s judgment – which had found fair use in all but five instances – and remanded the case back to the district court for further proceedings.
On remand, the district court reevaluated the case in light of the Eleventh Circuit’s prior decision, and issued an order on March 31, 2016, finding fair use in all but four instances of alleged infringement. Georgia State was designated as the prevailing party.