I just received an e-mail from a German publisher of a society journal
accusing me of reselling or redistributing their journal.   I'm omitting
the journal name and the person's name in case there are further legal
issues.  It is regarding a journal we do NOT subscribe to.  I think they
may be talking about unsolicited issues of their title offered on
backmed as an alternative to trashing them.  Has anyone received
anything like this?  I know that US laws don't require sending the
issues back.

Anyway, here's the e-mail I received and I'd appreciate suggestions for
dealing with it:

"Dear Ms Shirley Rais,

We have recognized that you resale or redistribute issues of our journal
[omitting journal name-sr]. Unfortunately, we do not allow this if
copies are received free of charge, as indicated in the journal by
interdiction clause and stamp. You were informed that the copies are
made available under these conditions. Therefore you need to retract any
resale or redistribution offer of our journal. If you do not wish to
make available them to your users then you need to send back these
copies to us. We note a settlement date of August 15, 2006. If you do
not follow this request we need to bill you the costs for the received
copies.

Sincerely,

[omitting publisher name, sr], PhD

Managing Editor [omitting society name, sr]"

Thanks for any suggestions,

Shirley Rais, MLS
Chair, Serials Department
Loma Linda University Libraries
11072 Anderson St.
Loma Linda, CA 92350

Ph: 909-558-4583
Fx: 909-558-4919
srais@llu.edu