GreatSchools, Inc. v. Maura Larkins [1]

Maura Larkins, who maintains the San Diego Education Report [2] website and writes about education attorneys in San Diego, created a page on her website where she reproduced material from a forum thread from SchwabLearning.org's Parent-to-Parent message board [3]. Her purpose in doing so was to explain and illustrate her suspicion that a pseudonymous poster to the message board, "asearchers," was an attorney posting comments in an effort to discredit special education parents who had complained that their children were not receiving appropriate educations.

On March 13, 2008, a representative of GreatSchools, Inc., the company that owns SchwabLearning.org, emailed Larkins, demanding that she cease and desist from using SchwabLearning.org's content on her site. The email stated that reproducing message board content without permission was a violation of the GreatSchools Terms of Use [4]. It further indicated that GreatSchools would take legal action if Larkins failed to remove the content within two business days.

Larkins has not removed the material (as of 3/19/08), citing a fair use notice that appears on the homepage [2] of her website.