Abstract:

Trough the approach of literature survey accompanied by website survey, five typical lawsuits about copyright of Ereserves were acquired. After a thorough analysis, we found that making coursepacks is not necessarily fair use, universities copying without authors’ permission also needed the legitimacy judgment, legal foundation of most defenses is not solid, and libraries are always involved with indirect infringement. Finally, we discussed relevant theoretical issues that prevent Ereserves from infringing copyright, for example, establishing fair use framework, not four factors are all satisfied is counted as fair use, acquisition of license is the future trend, archiving copyrighted works and nobody used them is counted as fair use.

Key words: E-reserves, Copyright, Fair use, License