来源：《自然》
原文刊登日期：2022年3月4日
A landmark court case in which two major academic publishers sued the popular website ResearchGate for hosting 50 of their copyrighted papers has come to a close — although both sides say that they will appeal. The court in Munich, Germany, has not only prohibited ResearchGate from hosting the papers, but also ruled that it is responsible for copyright-infringing content uploaded on its platform. The decision has the potential to set a precedent for further restrictions on the site, which has 20 million users worldwide.
两家主要学术出版商起诉热门网站ResearchGate，称其提供了它们的50篇受版权保护的论文，这一具有里程碑意义的法庭案件已经结束——尽管双方都表示将上诉。德国慕尼黑法院不仅禁止ResearchGate托管这些论文，还裁定ResearchGate对上传至其平台上的侵犯版权的内容负责。这一决定有可能为进一步限制该网站创造先例。该网站在全球拥有2000万用户。
Neither side emerged a clear winner in this case, says Nancy Sims, a librarian at the University of Minnesota who specializes in copyright issues. “Each party got some pieces that were very favourable to them and some pieces that were less favourable to their claims.”
明尼苏达大学的图书管理员南希·西姆斯专门研究版权问题，她说，在这起案件中，双方都不是明确的赢家。“双方都得到了一些对他们非常有利的东西，也得到了一些对他们不利的东西。”
Elsevier, which is based in Amsterdam, and the American Chemical Society (ACS), in Washington DC, filed the lawsuit against ResearchGate in a regional court in Munich in 2017, alleging that the site had made copyrighted material freely available. ResearchGate said that it could not be held responsible for the content, which was uploaded by authors.
2017年，总部位于阿姆斯特丹的爱思唯尔(Elsevier)和位于华盛顿特区的美国化学学会(ACS)在慕尼黑的一家地方法院对ResearchGate提起诉讼，指控该网站免费提供受版权保护的内容。ResearchGate表示，它不会对这些由论文作者自己上传的内容负责。
“We are pleased with the verdict” says a spokesperson for the Coalition for Responsible Sharing, a group of publishers — including Elsevier and the ACS — that was formed in 2017. “The clear aim of the legal action was to clarify the responsibilities of ResearchGate for the content that it illicitly distributes on its site, which it does for its own commercial gain.”
“我们对这一裁决感到满意，”负责任分享联盟的一名发言人表示。该联盟是一个由爱思唯尔和ACS等出版商组成的集团，成立于2017年。“法律诉讼的目的是明确ResearchGate对其网站非法分发内容的责任，这些是为了其自身的商业利益。”
“We believe that the outputs of scientific research, the majority of which is funded by public money, should be shared as openly as possible and we’ll continue to support researchers in sharing their work easily and legally,” says a spokesperson for ResearchGate. They add that it is up to publishers to work with platforms to remove uploaded content, and that in the years since the case was first brought they had introduced software that could help prevent the sharing of copyrighted material. “We’ve built a fully compliant solution, and are pleased that Elsevier and ACS are using it.” In a public statement posted after the Munich court’s ruling, ResearchGate said that it will appeal parts of the decision.
ResearchGate的一位发言人说：“我们相信，大部分由公共资金资助的科学研究成果应该尽可能开放地分享，我们将继续支持研究人员轻松、合法地分享他们的工作。”ResearchGate补充说，出版商应该与平台合作删除上传的内容，而且在此案起诉以来的几年里，他们已经推出了可以帮助防止共享版权材料的软件。“我们已经建立了一个完全合规的解决方案，并很高兴看到Elsevier和ACS正在使用它。”慕尼黑法院做出裁决后，ResearchGate在一份公开声明中表示，将对判决的部分内容提出上诉。