In 2017, academic publishers Elsevier and the American Chemical Society sued ResearchGate for alleged copyright infringement, specifically regarding 50 papers uploaded by users to the academic networking site. A Munich court issued a ruling on January 31 that ResearchGate was indeed in the wrong and that the site will be prohibited from hosting the papers (all of which have already been taken down), but declined to grant the publishers’ request for damages, Nature reports. However, the publishers now say they plan to appeal the decision.
“We are pleased with the verdict,” a spokesperson for the Coalition for Responsible Sharing, a group of publishers that includes Elsevier and the ACS, tells Nature. “The clear aim of the legal action was to clarify the responsibilities of ResearchGate for the content that it illicitly distributes on its site, which it does for its own commercial gain.”
ResearchGate also plans to appeal parts of ...
