Chegg Responds to Lawsuit Filed by Pearson Education
Last year, we reported on a lawsuit between Chegg, Inc. (“Chegg”) and Pearson Education (“Pearson”). Pearson, a large textbook and education company, accused Chegg of copyright infringement as Chegg publishes answers online to the questions found in Pearson’s textbooks. You can read about Pearson’s arguments and accusations in our September 27, 2021, post.
Since our last post, Chegg responded to Pearson's allegations. In its Answer, Chegg asserts multiple defenses, including that “any use of Pearson’s asserted copyrighted works by or through Chegg’s services constitutes fair use.” Chegg does not provide further details to support its fair use claim.
Chegg also asserted the equitable estoppel doctrine. It claims that, “as of approximately 2010, Pearson was aware of Chegg’s practice of displaying on its website original solutions to end-of-chapter questions from Pearson’s textbooks” and that between April 26, 2016, until May 31, 2021, the parties had a licensing agreement whereby "Pearson granted Chegg a license to display the question text from Pearson textbooks alongside corresponding step-by-step solutions that had been created by Chegg . . . ." Chegg argues that “Pearson intended that Chegg would act on its representations that Chegg was permitted to post original solutions to Pearson textbook questions.”
We will continue to follow this case and provide updates as they become available.