Publishers settle copyright infringement lawsuit with ResearchGate; Chemistry World, September 18, 2023

REBECCA TRAGER, Chemistry World ; Publishers settle copyright infringement lawsuit with ResearchGate

"Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, a librarian and professor of information science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, says the settlement agreement ‘signals that ResearchGate has completed its journey from disrupter to partner within the scholarly communications ecosystem’. She notes that Elsevier and ACS have been using ResearchGate’s content blocking technology since at least early 2022, which indicates that ‘a more collaborative relationship’ has been in development for some time."

ResearchGate dealt a blow in copyright lawsuit; Nature, March 4, 2022

Diana Kwon, Nature; ResearchGate dealt a blow in copyright lawsuit

"A landmark court case in which two major academic publishers sued the popular website ResearchGate for hosting 50 of their copyrighted papers has come to a close — although both sides say that they will appeal. The court in Munich, Germany, has not only prohibited ResearchGate from hosting the papers, but also ruled that it is responsible for copyright-infringing content uploaded on its platform. The decision has the potential to set a precedent for further restrictions on the site, which has 20 million users worldwide."

Publishers Escalate Legal Battle Against ResearchGate; Inside Higher Ed, October 4, 2018

Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed; Publishers Escalate Legal Battle Against ResearchGate

"The court documents, obtained by Inside Higher Ed from the U.S. District Court in Maryland, include an “illustrative” but “not exhaustive list” of 3,143 research articles the publishers say were shared by ResearchGate in breach of copyright protections. The publishers suggest they could be entitled to up to $150,000 for each infringed work -- a possible total of more than $470 million.

This latest legal challenge is the second that the publishers have filed against ResearchGate in the last year. The first lawsuit, filed in Germany in October 2017, is ongoing. Inside Higher Ed was unable to review court documents for the European lawsuit.

The U.S. lawsuit is the latest development in a long and increasingly complex dispute between some academic publishers and the networking site."