HathiTrust Copyright Case: Resources

This page provides an overview of EDUCAUSE resources related to the HathiTrust/Authors Guild lawsuit revolving around orphan works, fair use, and copyright. The page is currently being developed; more information will be added shortly.

HathiTrust Lawsuit

The HathiTrust Decision: A Win for Fair Use and the Use of Technology
by Joan Cheverie, Policy Update blog (October 12, 2012)
Find out more about the October 10, 2012 ruling in favor of the HathiTrust Digital Library (HDL) and its university partners in a copyright infringement suit brought by the Authors Guild (AG) and other group. While the judge did not rule that all scanning for all purposes by universities should be considered fair use, he instead focused on the transformative nature of the libraries' use.

The Orphan Wars
by James Grimmelmann, EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 47, no. 1 (January/February 2012)
“Orphan books”—books that are in copyright but whose copyright owners can't be found—have been in the news lately, thanks to lawsuits over Google's plan to scan a copy of every book ever published. What started as a project to make a better search engine has gradually become a focal point for debate over whether the legal system can find a way to rescue the orphans from copyright limbo. Some of the libraries working with Google have announced plans to make available to their patrons digital versions of the books they think are orphans; an authors’ group has sued to stop them. In this column, Grimmelmann reviews the convoluted history of the Google Books lawsuits, with an eye toward what they might mean for orphan books.

What's at Stake in the HathiTrust Lawsuit?
EDUCAUSE Live! Webinar Archive, featuring Jonathan Band (Jonathan Band PLLC) and James Grimmelmann (New York Law School) (October 28, 2011)
Hear an overview of the case to date and learn more about the legal questions on which the Authors Guild v. H. athiTrust lawsuit will turn, as well as the potential implications for universities and libraries.

The Orphan Works Controversy Heats Up Again
by Joan Cheverie, Policy Update blog (September 14, 2011)
On Monday, September 12th, the Authors Guild filed a copyright infringement suit against the HathiTrust, a non-profit digital repository partnership between major research institutions and libraries....The suit alleges that the HathiTrust and the universities are violating the rights of rightsholders by systematically digitizing, storing, and distributing copies of books held by these institutions without permission.

HathiTrust History

HathiTrust Research Center Announced
by Robert H. McDonald, EDUCAUSE blog (April 20, 2011)
Learn about the 2011 creation of the HathiTrust Research Center, a joint effort between Indiana University and the University of Illinois. The center was founded to enable access for nonprofit and educational users to published works in the public domain stored within HathiTrust "while preventing intellectual property misuse within the confines of current U.S. copyright law."

Building "Above-Campus" Library Services
by Paul N. Courant and John Wilkin, EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 45, no. 4 (July/August 2010): 74-75
Budget pressures being experienced by all parts of higher education have hit research libraries in a distinctive way, challenging those institutions in their efforts to create comprehensive collections and in their attempts to devote reasonable levels of resources to the work of curating their collections. [C]oordinated action is the only viable solution for collecting and preserving specialized publications from many parts of the globe. ... [T]he lessons from HathiTrust (http://www.hathitrust.org) provide an example of deep collaboration across many institutions to solve practical problems.

Giving Birth to an Elephant: HathiTrust's Story of IT, Libraries, and Uncommon Acts of Collaboration
Robert H. McDonald, EDUCAUSE Annual Conference presentation (November 5, 2009)
The HathiTrust is a shared digital preservation repository for research libraries that seek to build a universal networked scholarly library. To create HathiTrust, an uncommon collaboration occurred between its two lead technical institutions, the University of Michigan and Indiana University.