By Hailey Heinz

Nine major publishing companies brought a lawsuit against Gnomon Copy yesterday, alleging the copy shop has been distributing coursepacks without obtaining the rights to their content.

The suit does not specify a dollar amount, since the lawsuit’s first step will be to determine whether legal infringement occurred, then to determine appropriate damages, said Douglas Black, public relations manager for the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC).

The CCC is a non-profit organization based in Danvers, which serves as an intermediary between copy shops and rights holders. The CCC obtains permission for copy shops to create coursepacks, collects royalty fees from them and distributes these fees to the publishers and authors, Black said.

“There’s nothing inherently illegal about a coursepack,” Black said. “It’s just that it’s alleged that these particular ones were produced without permission.”

A press release by the attorneys for the publishing companies alleges “Gnomon routinely duplicated and distributed copyrighted materials … without obtaining copyright permission from the publishers directly or through Copyright Clearance Center.”

As of press time, Gnomon management could not be reached for comment.

The use of coursepacks is common among Northeastern professors as a way to provide students with materials other than textbooks at a cheaper cost.

“You want to be current with your students, so that makes it attractive to try to put together a package of material that comes from the most current courses,” said Stephen Burgard, professor and director of the School of Journalism.

The publishing companies are represented by Kotin, Crabtree and Strong, a Boston law firm.

“This is one of the largest groups of publishers ever to come together in a joint legal action against copyright infringement by copy shops,” said attorney William Strong in a press release. “Businesses must recognize that permission is required for academic course materials that contain copyright-protected content.”