Major publishers secure injunction against e-book sellers
A New York judge has granted an enforcement group of educational publishers a preliminary injunction against 63 e-book websites accused of selling illegal and unlicensed e-books.
The Educational Publishers Enforcement Group (EPEG) publishers—which consists of Cengage, Elsevier, Macmillan Learning, McGraw Hill and Pearson— announced the preliminary injunction on Friday, September 18.
EPEG had filed its suit for copyright and trademark against these websites in August this year at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
On the same date, the group obtained a temporary restraining order, requiring the immediate shutdown of the infringing activity on these websites, as well as the cessation of the services that support the illegal websites.
Matt Oppenheim, who serves as lead counsel to EPEG publishers, said: “Once again, the court has shown that illegal behaviour doesn't pay for the operators of these pirate websites. Selling illegal e-books harms authors, publishers and everyone else involved in the legitimate textbook industry.”
Now, through the grant of the preliminary injunction, injunctive relief has been extended through the pendency of the litigation.
According to the publishers, this is the third suit since November 2019 that EPEG publishers have brought against pirate e-book websites, and the third time they have successfully obtained a preliminary injunction.
This current suit claims that the operators of the ‘pirate’ e-book websites pay Google and Microsoft’s Bing to place prominent ads in response to searches for the publishers' legitimate content.
“The use of ads to sell infringing content runs counter to Google's and Microsoft's own policies and has led to an infestation of pirated e-books for sale online,” said the publishers.
Meanwhile, a tentative date has been set for the dispute between The Internet Archive and four major book publishers over alleged “willful mass copyright infringement” in the same court.
In June this year, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House filed suit against the Internet Archive, accusing the online library of intentional and systematic copyright infringement.
Judge John Koeltl of the New York court has ordered all parties to be ready for trial by November 12, 2021. He set a deadline of December 1, 2020, to notify the court if the parties are willing to enter settlement talks with a magistrate judge.
The Internet Archive said that its attorneys had met with representatives for the publishers, but were unable to reach an agreement.
Brewster Kahle, Internet Archive’s founder, said: “We had hoped to settle this needless lawsuit. Right now the publishers are diverting attention and resources from where they should be focused: on helping students during this pandemic.”
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