Shopify Inc. SHOP 6.92% denied that it is liable for alleged copyright and trademark infringement by online sellers using its platform, responding to a lawsuit filed by textbook publishers.
A group of five educational publishers, including Pearson Education Inc. and McGraw Hill LLC, sued Shopify in December. Their suit claims the e-commerce company is liable for the unauthorized school textbooks, test packs and solutions manuals sold by websites using Shopify’s services.
Shopify sells technology that enables people to put up websites, accept online payments, and ship and track orders to customers.
The e-commerce company said Friday in its rejoinder to the lawsuit that it complies with existing copyright laws passed by Congress, which generally shield internet infrastructure companies from being sued for copyright violations committed by users.
The publishers may not like the laws, Shopify said, but the court is the wrong venue to compel changes to existing rules.
“This lawsuit is an attempt to do through this Court what Plaintiffs could not achieve in the legislative sphere,” said Shopify in its response, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
The company also denied the allegation that it hasn’t done enough to stop the illegal sale of textbooks from websites that use Shopify’s online tools. “Shopify has swiftly responded to Plaintiffs’ notices of infringement, taken down vast quantities of allegedly infringing materials, and terminated repeat bad actors,” said the company.
Shopify said it responded to more than 5,000 takedown requests sent by the textbook publishers, involving more than 1,750 merchants and more than 50,000 web addresses. Shopify said more than 90% of those web addresses have been taken down.
Though Shopify is based in Canada, the publishers are suing the company in Virginia because the company has servers located in Ashburn, Va.
“We are confident in our legal position, and we are glad to see that Shopify agrees they are subject to U.S. law and a U.S. court,” said Matt Oppenheim, one of attorneys for the publishing group.
Write to Vipal Monga at vipal.monga@wsj.com
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Appeared in the January 29, 2022, print edition.
