Word: textbooks
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Barnes & Noble Inc., which manages the Coop bookstore, sent a cease and desist letter to BrunoBooks.com CEO Jesse Maddox, threatening legal action unless the Web site stopped taking textbook information from the Coop’s site...
...BrunoBooks—a service operated out of Brown University—collects textbook information from stores at various colleges, including the Harvard Coop, and allows students to compare prices against those of online vendors. Last fall, BrunoBooks merged with the similar Harvard-based service CrimsonReading. org, which was founded by Tom D. Hadfield ’08 and Jon T. Staff ’10 in 2006 to help students find cheaper textbooks...
...According to Coop President Jerry P. Murphy ’73, the “copyrighted database” that the letter refers to includes book titles, as well as used and new textbook prices. But Maddox says Barnes & Noble’s claims are unsubstantiated, since this information is in the public domain and cannot be copyrighted...
...cease and desist letter was not the first legal encounter between the Coop and textbook price comparison services. In Sept. 2007, the Coop called the Cambridge Police Department after employees from CrimsonReading—who were manually writing down textbook ISBN numbers in the Coop—refused to leave the store. But the police made no arrests, and three affiliates of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society later denounced the Coop’s actions in a Crimson editorial, arguing that CrimsonReading had not violated copyright...
...After this incident and the subsequent backlash, the Coop backed down and CrimsonReading continued compiling textbook ISBN numbers from the store...