staggers@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Ken Staggers) (03/30/91)
From Chicago Tribune 3/30/91 A federal judge has ruled that Kinkos Graphics Corp violated copyright laws by copying excerpts from books used in college courses and selling them to students. In a victory for book publishers, US District Judge Constance Baker Motley ordered Thursday that Kinko's, which has some 200 stores nationwide, mostly near college campuses, stop the practice and pay damages of $510,000 as well as attorney fees and costs. The suit was filed in Manhattan federal court by Basic Books Inc, Harper & Row Publishers Inc., John Wiley & Sons...etc Ventura, CA-based Kinko admitted that it copied the excerpts without permission, compiled them into course "packets" and sold them to students. In this case, the packets were compiled based on orders placed by the professors at Columbia University, New York University, and the New School for Social Research as to what readings they needed for their courses. Kinko's then produced 300-400 page packets, including substantial portions of copyrighted books, at a cost of about $24 to the student. "Although Kinko's tries to impress this court with its purportedly altruistic motives, the facts show that Kinko's copying had the intended purpose of supplanting the copyright holders' commercially valuable right," the judge said. She pointed out that Kinko's provides incentives to professors who submit their course materials for copying. Those who "get in their orders early" receive a 10% discount card and the company provides campus pickup and delivery. "The extent of its insistence that theirs are educational concerns and not profitmaking ones boggles the mind," the judge ruled.