Holly Denney
OMDE 0614, 9040
Assignment 3
November 9, 2001
Fair Use
Electronic Citation: 1996 FED App. 0046P (6th Cir.); File Name 96a0046p.06;
No. 94-1778; U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
Princeton University Press, Macmillan, Inc., and St. Martin's Press, Inc., Plaintiffs-Appellees
v. Michigan Document Services, Inc., and James M. Smith, Defendants-Appellants
On appeal from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan
[before three Circuit Judges]
In this case, the defendants, Michigan Document Services, Inc., and James M. Smith ("MDS") appealed the district court's decision that found MDS guilty of willful copyright infringement through MDS's production of coursepacks for University of Michigan ("UM") students.
The legal issue in the case involved whether or not MDS's reproduction of copyrighted materials, at the request of UM professors and for sale at a profit to UM students, was a fair use of those materials.
This court reversed the district court's ruling and found MDS's use to be a fair use.
In its ruling, this court reviewed the district court's consideration of the Classroom Guidelines and Sections 106 and 107 of the Copyright Act. This court placed its emphasis on the four statutory factors in Section 107 of the Copyright Act, stating the four factors were unambiguous. In this court's opinion, the Classroom Guidelines were not applicable since Congress had not incorporated the Guidelines into Section 107. Within the four statutory factors, this court found that three of the factors clearly favored "fair use." The second factor was not ruled on; rather, the third and fourth factors would be determinative. This court's analysis of the factors was:
1. "the purpose and character of the use" by the students was nonprofit
educational. MDS did not use the materials to earn a profit, unlike the ruling
in Harper & Row, 471 U.S. Rather, MDS earned its profit by providing
a service - the cost-effective and efficient "slight" transformation
of materials into a coursepack to meet each professor's individual specifications;
2. "the nature of the copyrighted work" was deemed to contain sufficient
creative materials that the works were "protected by copyright and may
only be used 'fairly'" (para. 38). Campbell, 114 S. Ct., Feist,
499 U.S., and Harper & Row, 471 U.S., were cited to support this
position;
3. "the amount and substantiality of the portion used" did not replace
the original works, as was found by the district court, Princeton, 855
F. Supp.;
4. no "effect of the use upon the potential market" was found. Relying
on Sony, 464 U.S., this court assigned the burden of proof to the plaintiffs.
The plaintiffs did not provide evidence of future harm to the market for or
to the value of the original works, only for lost permission fees. This court
stated that the plaintiffs' reasoning was circular - fair use required no permission
fees, therefore the plaintiffs suffered no harm through not receiving that to
which they were not entitled. This court, in its ruling, placed the greatest
emphasis on this fourth factor, following Harper & Row, 471 U.S.
This court's ruling also cited the statements of "more than one hundred authors … that they write for professional and personal reasons … [not] monetary compensation" (para. 51) as supporting "fair use."
However, Judge D. A. Nelson wrote a dissenting opinion that, while MDS's conduct
was not willful, MDS's use was not "fair." Among his reasons were:
· the publishers were challenging MDS's giving itself a competitive edge
"by declining to pay licensing fees" (para. 59) not the students'
use of the materials;
· the excerpt from the one book was substantial;
· there was market harm to the publishers and that permission fees were
a significant factor in "the potential value of the copyrighted works of
scholarship published" (para. 64).
The case was heard again later that year by the en banc Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. That decision vacated the previous three-judge panel decision. The vote was eight to five, finding the copying was infringement.
MDS filed a petition for Writ of Certiorari to the Supreme Court of the United States, but that appeal was denied.
MDS closed on March 31, 1998.
Reference *
Princeton University Press v. Michigan Document Services. (1996). Retrieved from the World Wide Web on October 22, 2001 http://www.law.emory.edu/6circuit/apr96/96a0046p.06.html
Other Works Referenced *
Princeton University Press v. Michigan Document Services. (1996). Retrieved from the World Wide Web on November 7, 2001 http://fairuse.stanford.edu/mds/110896cofadec.html
Michigan Document Services Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the Supreme Court of the United States. (1997). Retrieved from the World Wide Web on November 7, 2001 http://fairuse.stanford.edu/mds/certpetit.html
MDS to close after 18 years of business. (March 20, 1998). The Michigan Daily. Retrieved from the World Wide Web on November 7, 2001 http://www.pub.umich.edu/daily/1998/mar/03-20-98/news/news5.html