ResearchGate

Last year, a coalition of multiple publishers alleged infringement of millions of works by ResearchGate (a popular networking site for academics), with a few of those publishers even going so far as to file a lawsuit against them. This case continues, with a Munich court holding their first hearing just days ago.

Publishers Elsevier and the American Chemical Society have alleged that the popular academic networking site, ResearchGate, has committed copyright infringement by sharing copyrighted research papers with their users, according to an article at www.sciencemag.org. ResearchGate claims more than 13 million users who can use personal pages to upload and share material including published papers or book chapters. These uploads, now comprising millions of works, are usually only accessible by paid subscription.