For Immediate Release

Contact: Judith Platt

Ph: 202-220-4551

AAP Applauds Members’ Success in Suit to Stop Sales of Pirated and Unauthorized Textbooks

Washington, DC, February 29, 2008:    The Association of American Publishers (AAP) welcomed the February 28 announcement by four of its member publishers that they have successfully settled a trademark and copyright infringement action against the owners and operates of ValoreBooks.com, an online textbook marketplace. The four AAP publishers, McGraw-Hill Education, Pearson Education, John Wiley & Sons, and Cengage Learning, brought suit against Valore for repeatedly permitting and assisting sales by third-party sellers of pirated educational materials and of foreign manufactured editions of textbooks not authorized for sale in North America, including editions bearing the publishers' trademarks that are materially different from their authorized U.S. counterparts.

Under the terms of the settlement, Valore is prohibited from importing, purchasing, packaging, altering, marketing, or offering for distribution or sale any of the plaintiff publishers' copyrighted textbooks and other foreign manufactured materials authorized for sale only in international regions or specific countries outside North American or that bear the publishers' trademarks and are materially different from their authorized U.S. counterparts, and from selling and distributing pirated electronic copies of the publishers' works.

Allan Adler, AAP’s Vice President for Legal and Government Affairs,  lauded the publishers’ tenacity in pursuing blatant infringements of their intellectual property rights.   “Individual publishers are in the best position to track and assess violations of their intellectual property rights and AAP is proud of its members’ determination to pursue infringers and bring them to court.  AAP and the industry are ready to support these efforts in any way we can,” Adler said.

The Association of American Publishers is the national trade association of the U.S. book publishing industry. AAP’s more than 300 members include most of the major commercial publishers in the United States, as well as smaller and non-profit publishers, university presses and scholarly societies.  AAP members publish hardcover and paperback books in every field, educational materials for the elementary, secondary, postsecondary,  and professional markets, scholarly journals, computer software, and electronic products and services.  The protection of intellectual property rights in all media is among the Association’s highest priorities.

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