Re: copyright

[Steve Burstein <sburstei@WAHOO.SJSU.EDU>]

Dear group,

In reguards to copyright we have been discussing this at my school site.
In June of 1999, the supreme court handed down decisions sheilding states
from federal law.  In particular the case College Savings Bank vs Florida
prepaid 98-149 The court said that  a private bank developed a popular
tuition prepayment plan and later several states adopted this plan, that
the states could not be sued for patent infringement and for false
advertising in violation of trademark law. Basically the court said the
bank could not sue the state. The court case was a 5-4 decision with the 4
liberal judges in dissent. Judge Breyer used Los Angeles as an example
that UCLA could sue USC for patent infringement but that USC could not sue
UCLA for the same act.
So my question to all is do we really need site licenses for software
products. I know there are some real experts in this group like Carol
Simpson who might be able to shed some light on this topic. It would seem
that public schools (as state agencies) would be allowed to violate
federal  copyright law.

Steven Burstein
Library Media Specialist
Parkman Middle School
Woodland Hills CA
librarian@mac.com
http://www.lausd.k12.ca.us/Parkman_MS/library
A KidsConnect and Virtual Refence Desk volunteer

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