Erasmus University sues Studocu for copyright infringement

In April, the Erasmus University of Rotterdam filed a lawsuit against Studocu, a platform for sharing documents between students, for copyright infringement.

The lawsuit focuses on the website Studeersnel.nl, which is operated by Studeersnel BV, known as Studocu outside the Netherlands. While this platform aims to facilitate the exchange of educational resources between students worldwide, it also provides access to lectures, assignments and other educational materials created by professors at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam. The university claims that it owns the copyright to these materials and argues that they should not be hosted on the Studocu platform.

In addition to seeking the removal of the unauthorised shared educational material, according to Studocu the University is requesting the platform to filter and block all material uploaded by students from its institution. Under the Digital Services Act, Studocu, as a hosting provider, is obliged to do its best to prevent and deal with infringements of intellectual property rights. To comply with this obligation, Studocu set up a Take-Down request option on their platform, and claim that doing so fulfils its obligations.

This case is quite controversial, not only because of the possible blocking of a specific group of users (students of the Erasmus University of Rotterdam would therefore be blocked from using the platform), but also because some teachers voluntarily upload their materials to the platform and blocking them could constitute a copyright infringement.