Three major publishing companies filed a lawsuit against Boundless Learning, a start-up based in Boston, for using public resources to create online textbooks, the company announced Thursday.
Pearson Education Inc., Cengage Learning Inc. and Macmillan Higher Education are suing Boundless for “deliberately copying the creative, scholarly and aesthetic,” components of the original publishers, according to the original complaint filed March 23.
Boundless made the lawsuit public knowledge Thursday on its blog.
The company has closed and the suit is pending at the U.S. District Court in New York.
The Boundless website stated it offered students an alternative to expensive textbooks made from “high quality, openly licensed and free educational content.”
Boston University School of Law Professor Michael Meurer said the three publishing companies might have a valid intellectual property infringement case.
“Under copyright law, a copyright owner can protect more than words on a page,” Meurer said. “They can protect the structure, the organization of the book. There’s the possibility of infringement if they carefully, slavishly, copied the presentation or the structure of the book.”
Students said they did not approve of violating copyrights, but college textbooks costs prove to be a heavy burden on cash-strapped students that they would leap at an alternative.
“It’s not fair to the people who run these publishing companies, but I mean, it’s free,” said Cheryl Lang, a College of Arts and Sciences freshman.
Lang said she would not mind paying for textbooks if she could resell them for the same price, but she often ends up losing money.
“I spent $400 on textbooks last semester, but only got about $30 back from reselling them,” said School of Hospitality Administration freshman Paige Seibert. “If there were ways to get textbooks for free, everyone would definitely go for it.”
Meurer said this would not be an open-and-shut case because there is a fine line in copyright violation. But students are unlikely to suffer any consequences if Boundless is found guilty, he said.
“A student who is reading a book that is infringed has nothing to worry about,” he said. “The act of reading is not subject to the copyright. If you are copying, then the act of copying would make you an infringer.”
Casey Harris, a College of Engineering senior, said the possible copyright infringement was a major deterrent. He said he rarely uses or buys textbooks.
“Other people were trying to create those textbooks and they’re basically stealing ideas,” he said.
The next step in the lawsuit is unclear. For now, Boundless is currently available to students on an invite-only basis, but has plans to open their resources to students as early as next semester, according to their website.
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