Copyright Clearance Center

CCC was founded in 1978 as a not-for-profit organization in response to negotiations preceding the United States Copyright Act of 1976. The I.R.S. revoked CCC's tax-exempt status in 1982 and the United States Tax Court affirmed that holding, finding that whatever public benefits CCC's activities might produce, its primary purpose was to "further the economic interest of publishers and copyright owners" and its founders (a group of publishers) had no "interests of any substance beyond the creation of a device to protect their copyright ownership and collect license fees". CCC still maintains a state-level not-for-profit status in the State of New York.

In 2000, CCC released RightsLink, a product that handles automated permission and reprint requests.

CCC later expanded into the search domain, with a suite collectively known as RightFind. To expand this, the company acquired Pubget, a search engine for scientists, in 2012, although this was subsequently closed in 2017. In 2014, the company acquired Infotrieve, a text mining company. In 2015, the company announced that RightFind could now allow users to search CCC for documents and then export them into 3rd party text mining software, currently limited to only Linguamatics or SciBite.

Lobbying and litigation

CCC, along with the Association of American Publishers (AAP), recruited three publishers (Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Sage Publications) to sue Georgia State University, alleging that GSU's e-reserves system infringed copyright. CCC and AAP jointly underwrote the costs of the litigation in the case, Cambridge University Press v. Becker, which cost the plaintiffs several million dollars to litigate initially.

The plaintiffs lost the case, and were ordered to pay the defendant's legal fees when Georgia State University was deemed the "prevailing party". Notwithstanding the "prevailing party" decision, the plaintiffs characterized the case as "flawed" but not a "loss", and nonetheless filed an appeal. The attorneys' fees were estimated by plaintiffs to be "substantial." CCC has announced it will continue to fund 50% of litigation costs on appeal.

CCC has been involved in lobbying and litigation to expand the scope of copyright, and is a founding member of the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations (IFRRO), which has a similar position.