In the era of ever-frivolous lawsuits, this one might take the cake.
KTLA is reporting that a professor at Orange, California’s Chapman University is dragging five of his students to court because they had the audacity to post portions of their final exam online. Assistant Professor David A. Berkovitz is calling for a jury trial after finding portions of the exams on the website Course Hero, which students use to bone up on specific courses.
Berkovitz said he found the exam, which he created for his spring 2021 business class, posted this January to the resource website. So, in a totally business savvy move, he filed copyright applications for his test and, on February 25, his request was granted.
Now he’s taking the students to court claiming they infringed on his copyright without his permission by replicating and sharing copies of his work.
His attorney, Marc Hankin, also said the move gave those in his class who access Course Hero an unfair advantage over those who had not. Hankin told the outlet, “Not only is it unethical and a violation of the honor code, but more importantly the business law courses are graded on a curve. So if one or more students artificially inflates their own grade, they’re artificially suppressing the grades of their classmates who worked hard, studied hard, and are doing their own work.”
One problem in this whole dog and pony show — the professor has no idea who posted his final exam online. So, he’s narrowing down the list from his spring 2021 business class. Once he finds out who they are, he’ll seek an injunction on them that would bar the students from ever replicating or sharing his work again.
He also wants the devices the students used to share his work impounded — and other monetary damages.