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Copyright Information and Guidelines

This guide for the Bentley University community presents information on copyright and provides guidance in evaluating the use of copyrighted material in higher education and scholarship.

Business Cases

Business cases are published works licensed for use directly from the publishers and thus are treated differently than other content. Copyright permissions or licensing agreements need to be purchased for each individual who will be using a case. Cases can be purchased through the Bentley University bookstore which has an arrangement with Harvard Business School for the use of its cases.

Due to copyright restrictions, print copies of business cases cannot be:

  • Placed on library reserve for students to access.
  • Purchased by the library for its collection.
  • Photocopied or digitized and disseminated to students. Each student must purchase a copy.
  • Digitized and posted to Brightspace.

Electronic Access

  • Harvard Business School Cases: EBSCOHost's Business Source Complete provides abstracts only (not full-text) to HBS cases. Full text access is available for purchase directly from the Harvard Business School store.
  • Harvard Business Review and Cases: EBSCOHost's Business Source Complete provides full-text access to the Harvard Business Review and the cases published therein, however, the terms of use of HBR content is very restrictive. The licensing only provides access for "private individual use" and "is not intended for use as assigned course material", nor can it appear on Blackboard or any other electronic reserve system. Please read the full notice of restrictions below:

 

Harvard Business Review Notice of Use Restrictions, May 2009

Harvard Business Review and Harvard Business Publishing Newsletter content on EBSCOhost is licensed for the private individual use of authorized EBSCOhost users. It is not intended for use as assigned course material in academic institutions nor as corporate learning or training materials in businesses. Academic licensees may not use this content in electronic reserves, electronic course packs, persistent linking from syllabi or by any other means of incorporating the content into course resources. Business licensees may not host this content on learning management systems or use persistent linking or other means to incorporate the content into learning management systems.

Harvard Business Publishing will be pleased to grant permission to make this content available through such means. For rates and permission, contact permissions@harvardbusiness.org.

  • Other Cases - ABI/Inform Global also includes business cases and business case studies from a number of publishers and allows users to link to cases via static or persistent links with the proper licensing provided by the vendor.

If you require further information on the proper use of business cases in course instruction, please contact the bookstore at (781) 891-3107.