ResearchGate dealt a blow in lawsuit
Neither side has emerged as the clear winner of a court case in which two major academic publishers sued ResearchGate for hosting 50 of their copyrighted papers. The court in Germany ruled that ResearchGate is responsible for copyright-infringing content uploaded to its platform by authors. But the court rejected the publishers’ request to be paid damages, and the direct implications for any article other than the 50 named in the lawsuit are unclear. The ruling is “far from a blocking order”, says legal scholar Guido Westkamp. “In principle, any other content is subject to a new lawsuit.” Both sides say they will appeal.