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The law school’s Professor Kenneth Crews was awarded the L. Ray Patterson Copyright Award: In Support of Users’ Rights by the American Library Association (ALA). The award was recently created to honor copyright expert L. Ray Patterson. Patterson was the Pope F. Brock Professor of Professional Responsibility at the University of Georgia School of Law and passed away in 2003. The award named in his honor was established to recognize contributions of an individual or group that pursues and supports the Constitutional purpose of the U.S. Copyright Law, fair use, and the public domain. Professor Crews will be the first-ever recipient of the Patterson Copyright Award at the 2005 ALA Annual Conference in Chicago in June 2005.

When announcing the award in January, the ALA’s Office of Information Technology Policy Copyright Advisory Committee cited Crews’ “innovative leadership as director of the Copyright Management Center at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis,” as well as his “efforts in negotiating for fair use guidelines in electronic reserves systems at the Conference on Fair Use,…work in modernizing copyright law as it applies to distance learning in the digital environment, and…analysis of the TEACH Act of 2002 that has informed discussion of that legislation nationwide.” According to Janice T. Pilch, Chair of the committee, Crews impressed them because his “numerous publications, lectures, and presentations have had an unrivaled influence in the fields of law and library and information science.”

Crews says he is flattered and touched to have received this award. Crews, who knew Patterson well, has called him “the ideal mentor and colleague, as well as a friend and supporter.” (“The Vox Populi of Copyright: A Tribute to Lyman Ray Patterson, ” Journal of Intellectual Property Law, The University of Georgia School of Law, Vol. 10, Spring 2003, Number 2, p. 264)

Crews is Samuel R. Rosen II Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Intellectual Property Law and Innovation, as well as Director of the Copyright Management Center and Professor of Library and Information Science.