Pearson Education, a giant of public book publishing, filed a lawsuit against the Chegg Education Technology Company for supposedly violating Pearson's copyright, only a few months after an association ended between the two companies.
Pearson alleges that Chegg infringed in his copyright, selling answers to chapter questions included in Pearson's textbooks. The answers are available for students through Chegg Study, an online tool that provides responses to thousands of task questions for a monthly fee.
"The answers are derived from the answers and, often, copied directly from the end of the Pearson chapter." A PERARSON press release said.
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The complaint, presented Monday in the New Jersey District Court, looks for unspecified damage and a court order that would require Chegg to stop using the sets of responses derived from Pearson materials. The case could have implications for the entire industry of the study guide, said Jonathan Band, a lawyer and intellectual property law expert.
"could not undermine not only Chegg, but has the entire industry of the study guides, and the study guides are based on existing texts and follow the general selection and arrangement of those texts , "said the band.
The Chegg Subscription Base grew 67 percent over the past year While many students attended online classes during the pandemic, financial times were reported. Nowadays, the company has 6.6 million users and a market capitalization of $ 11.1 billion.
Pearson complaint Lists 150 of his textbooks for which Chegg provides hundreds of thousands of answers, using the "copied or paraphrashed language of the original question," Pearson's press release said. For example, Chegg Study lists more than 700 responses about the Campbell Biology questions, a popular biology textbook.
A CHEGG spokesperson on Tuesday denied the company has violated Pearson's copyright. googleg.cmd.push (function () googleg.display ("dfp-ad-article_in_article"););
"CHEGG will vigorously fight Pearson's allegations and we believe that we are fully compliance with the copyright law," wrote the spokesman in a statement. "Chegg has been helping millions of students learn and prosper for many years, in compliance with copyright laws, creating a transforming digital learning platform that helps them learn more in less time and at a lower cost."
Four years ago, the two companies were associated to provide 50 Pearson titles to students through Chegg through a online textbook rental program.
The Chegg spokesman said that an association between the two companies ended on May 31 of this year. They refused to specify which association.
A Pearson spokesman also refused to comment on the association on Tuesday. "We are not in a position to be able to comment on our current or previous distribution agreements with Chegg," said the spokesman.
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"Pearson's content, those who relate Pearson's accusations, was only a fraction of this content of textbook solutions," said the Chegg statement.
band said that determining copyright infringement can be complicated.
"Copyright protects the expression, not ideas," the band said. "At the extremes, it is very easy to understand, but then there is a gray area in the middle of
