Ed startup Boundless Learning sued by textbook makers, following $8M raise - Boston Business Journal

abernard102@gmail.com 2012-08-20

Summary:

“Boston's Boundless Learning, a maker of free online college textbooks, disclosed Thursday that it raised an $8 million Series A round in February, weeks before getting hit with a lawsuit by three main players in the textbook industry. New investor Venrock led the Series A, while past investors also took part — NextView Ventures of Boston, Kepha Partners    of Waltham, Founder Collective and SV Angel, which had previously put $2 million into the startup. A few weeks after the funding closed, on March 16, the three major textbook makers filed a lawsuit in a bid to stop the company's efforts. The suit — from Pearson Education, Cengage Learning and MacMillan Higher Education — accuses Boundless Learning of copying material from the companies' biology, economics and psychology textbooks. ‘Defendant generates these 'replacement textbooks' by hiring individuals to copy and paraphrase from Plaintiffs' textbooks,’ the suit reads. The suit also departs from the characteristic bland language of most lawsuits in a number of places — stating at points that ‘Defendant teaches only the age-old business model of theft’ and that ‘Boundless gets an 'F' in originality.’ Boundless Learning CEO Ariel Diaz said Boundless Learning plans to defend ‘vigorously’ against the accusations. ‘Our sources are completely open information. We do not copy anything,’ he said. Diaz said the company has had a successful beta test of its product with several thousand college students in recent months, and is expecting to start opening up some features to the public within months. The startup, which employs 13 full-time, says it has worked with academic experts to craft ‘online experiences’ that aim to convey the information you'd find in a typical textbook, but in a more engaging manner. Features include letting students add their own notes and navigate quickly between areas of content...” The content comes from openly licensed educational content, created and posted online by faculty members over the past two decades, and curated by Boundless Learning's domain experts, he said... he suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, also levels the accusation that the company's product ‘misleads students’ and ‘has a corrosive effect on learning.’ ‘It shows (the firms) are worried about the threat to their business, and they're losing their grip on this particular market,’ he said. Firm co-founder Brian Balfour said the company's venture backers are willing to fund the defense of the startup.”

Link:

http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/startups/2012/04/ed-startup-boundless-learning-sued-by.html

Updated:

08/16/2012, 06:08

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.business_models oa.publishers oa.licensing oa.comment oa.copyright oa.oer oa.students oa.litigation oa.textbooks oa.courseware oa.education oa.funders oa.fundraising oa.cengage oa.macmillan oa.boundless_learning oa.pearson oa.books oa.libre

Authors:

abernard

Date tagged:

08/20/2012, 18:27

Date published:

04/09/2012, 12:56