Alligator Online

A recently sued Gainesville copy shop is to copyright law what a targeted music downloader is to the anti-piracy crackdown, a UF professor said.

Kenneth Roberts, owner of Custom Copies Inc. was sued by six major publishers Wednesday for printing their material in course packs without paying royalty fees. Roberts' store is also known as Orange & Blue Textbooks.

UF law professor Jeffrey Harrison, who specializes in copyright law, said that for years there has been an ongoing battle between publishers and those who compile published material for retail.

Harrison said Roberts' 20 infringements in three years may have been inadvertent like he said, but publishers are using him to scare other copy shops "just like with music cases where the recording industry has gone after some people who are illegally downloading to make an example of them and make others fearful."

William Strong, the publishers' Boston attorney, said he didn't send Roberts a bill before filing a lawsuit.

"We felt that it was important to send him a message," he said, adding, "I don't want to define too exactly what I mean by that."

The suing publishers include Harvard University and Pearson Education Inc. Roberts said some of the publishers make custom textbooks themselves, and Pearson competes fiercely with him for his biggest customers.

He said the lawsuit has nothing to do with copyright laws and everything to do with pushing him out as competition. One of his local rivals buys all of Roberts' course packs every year and sends them to the publishers, who comb through them looking for copyright infringements, Roberts said.

Allan Ryan, director of intellectual property at Harvard Business School Publishing, said he did not know of such a transfer.

"I don't want to get into questions of how we found out about what we found out," he said.

Ryan said the lawsuit is not about money owed, but ensuring that copy shops follow the law.

In 2003, Roberts settled a copyright lawsuit filed by three publishers, two of which sued him again last week.