Post University Alleges Infringement by Online Learning Platform Course Hero
Post University, a for-profit university located in Waterbury, Connecticut, filed a complaint last week alleging copyright infringement by online learning service Course Hero. According to Post University, Course Hero has committed, among other things, multiple instances of copyright infringement, trademark infringement, violation of the DMCA, and unfair competition by posting and creating derivative works of educational materials owned by Post University without Post University's permission.
According to the complaint, Course Hero provides subscribers with access to educational materials for universities across the country. In exchange for access to these materials, Course Hero offers a subscription program, which grants students access to thirty documents a month for a fee; students can access additional document for an additional fee. Course Hero also provides access to students in exchange for providing the service with access to new documents that Course Hero can upload for other students to view. Without a subscription, visitors to the service may view a version of the documents with the text blurred, obscured, and/or some pages missing. After a viewer has previewed four documents, the text becomes blurred further.
Post University states that it has invested millions of dollars in the development of educational materials by instructors and other employees. Post University writes in the complaint that it cannot adequately police or identify the full extent to which these protected materials have been uploaded to the Course Hero website due to Course Hero's paywall protections. However, even with this restriction, Post University has included as exhibits to the complaint, a sample of works on the Course Hero site for which Post holds the registered copyright.
According to the complaint, upon receipt of a take-down letter from Post University in January of this year, Course Hero removed 64 works on its website identified by Post University. However, Post University alleges that Course Hero stopped short of taking proactive steps to ensure that it removed other infringing materials that Post University claimed to have strong reason to believe were uploaded to the service. In a later letter, Post University claims to have offered to identify the infringing materials itself in exchange for free access to the site's materials. Course Hero's response, according to Post University's complaint, was simply to state that it had removed the identified materials, but allegedly stopped short once again of taking proactive steps to stop infringing on Post University's copyrighted works.
Course Hero has not yet filed an answer to Post University's complaint, so we do not yet know their side of the story. We will be sure to provide relevant updates as they become available.