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TestMasters Sued for Unauthorized Use of the LSAT
The National Law Journal
September 15, 2009
The Law School Admissions Council, which administers the Law School Admissions Test, is suing test prep company TestMasters for unauthorized use of LSAT test materials.
The council filed its copyright infringement and breach of contract case, The Law School Admissions Council Inc. v. Robin Singh Educational Services Inc. d.b.a. TestMasters, on Sept. 4 in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
According to the complaint, TestMasters started licensing the council's materials in 1992, but stopped making royalty payments in July 2008. The council claims that TestMasters owes it at least $900,000 for the 2007 license, which expired on July 31, 2009.
The council asked the court to bar the company and employees from using the materials. It also asked the court to ban TestMasters from claiming on its Web site and in promotional materials that it uses authorized LSAT materials.
Through a spokeswoman, the council declined to comment. Its attorneys at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius did not return calls for comment. Nor was a call for comment to TestMasters returned.
The case appears to be a pretty straightforward copyright infringement and breach of contract lawsuit, said Julia Huston, a partner at Boston intellectual property boutique Sunstein Kann Murphy & Timbers. What's unusual is that the complaint characterizes the defendant as admitting liability for the contract claims, she said.
Huston also said that defendants sometimes don't realize that things like test questions are subject to copyright law, but TestMasters knew because it entered into a licensing contract with the council. "You get the impression that the defendant simply doesn't have the money to pay the royalty under the contract, but that's not a defense," she said.
West Publishing Corp.'s BAR/BRI bar review business settled similar claims when the North Carolina Board of Law Examiners sued it and parent company Thomson Corp. in the Eastern District of North Carolina in 2007. In The Board of Law Examiners v. West Publishing Corp., the North Carolina board accused BAR/BRI of publishing and selling the board's copyrighted testing materials.
The court dismissed the case in February 2008, following the parties' late 2007 settlement.
