A copyright collective society sought to enforce an interim tariff against a university that had refused to continue as a licensee, while the university counterclaimed for a declaration that its fair dealing guidelines protected its copying activities.
The Court held that Board-approved tariffs are not mandatory against users who choose not to be licensed, as the relevant statutory provision only gives a collective society the right to collect defaulted payments from voluntary licensees.
Because the tariff was unenforceable, there was no live dispute to ground the university's request for declaratory relief on fair dealing.
The Court nonetheless identified significant errors in the lower courts' fair dealing analysis, which wrongly focused exclusively on the institutional perspective rather than the perspective of the students as the ultimate users.
