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Barkley sues Quizlet for copyright infringement
California-based test prep company Barkley & Associates has accused flashcard-making app Quizlet Inc. of copyright and trademark infringement as well as unfair business practices.
Barkley filed a complaint in the US District Court for the Central District of California on July 16th accusing Quizlet of copying its study resources for those seeking to become certified nurse practitioners.
The complaint said: “Quizlet makes copies of Barkley study materials and plasters the Quizlet name on them and entices users to visit the Quizlet site instead of Barkley.”
“Quizlet neither had permission nor a license to sell or make copies of any Barkley study materials”, the document read.
Barkley also blamed Quizlet for allowing users to post copyright-protected Barkley material on the Quizlet website and cited various examples in the complaint.
As a result, Barkley’s study materials also displayed multiple BARKLEY & ASSOCIATES® and copyright-protected © symbols, resulting in Quizlet being put on notice of infringing Barkley’s trademark and copyrights.
Despite these warnings, Quizlet relentlessly solicited potential customers for counterfeit goods, asking them to form Quizlet accounts and pay for study materials, the complaint said.
And it continues to “make products that copy the total image of Barkley’s products”.
Barkley claims it “neither approved nor authorized Quizlet’s use of Barkley’s trademarks, trade dress or copyrights”.
It adds that Quizlet’s unsanctioned products are confusing consumers by creating a “false association” between those products and Barkley’s, thereby diluting Barkley’s “famous brand”.
Barkley alleged that Quizlet copied its marks because “Quizlet knows that doing so would garner attention and drive sales to it, confuse consumers and damage Barkley”.
Barkley is asking for a minimum of US$1 million in statutory damages and an injunction barring future infringement.
Quizlet has yet to respond to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit resembles Pearson's ongoing litigation against Chegg. Pearson, the textbook publisher, sued Chegg in 2021 for their Chegg Study tool, alleging that it blatantly duplicated questions and answers from Pearson’s textbooks.
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