The American Chemical Society (ACS) is now suing Sci-Hub, the so-called "Pirate Bay for Scientists", over copyright infringement and counterfeiting, and is asking the courts to grant an injunction against the website in the US.

Following the news that academic publisher Elsevier won a legal judgement of $15m (£11.6m) in damages against Sci-Hub for allowing people to illegally download peer-reviewed academic papers for free, the world's largest scientific society ACS has filed its own lawsuit in the state of Virginia against the website.

Read more Sci-Hub: 'Pirate Bay for scientists' ordered to pay Elsevier $15m in damages

ACS is complaining that in addition to making hundreds of thousands of research papers owned by the society freely available, Sci-Hub has also cloned its website and is infringing its trademarks by operating two almost-identical replicas of the ACS website at pubs.acs.org.sci-hub.cc and acs.org.secure.sci-hub.cc.

"ACS discovered that in order to lure users to its illegitimate sources of the Society's stolen content, Sci-Hub conspirators most recently created 'spoofed' websites that mirror the look and feel of the Society's own scientific publishing website," said ACS director of external affairs and communications Glenn Ruskin.

"Through these pirate sites, Sci-Hub illegally distributes copyrighted scientific journal articles and book content stolen from ACS. The Sci-Hub pirate sites also have illegally counterfeited and replicated a number of protected trademarks of ACS."

Freedom of information, or hurting the progress of science?

Sci-Hub was started by Alexandra Elbakyan, a neuroscientist from Kazakhstan who is now based in Russia. Her focus was on making all information free, breaking the monopoly of academic publishers and copyright holders, who often make it difficult for academics to access even their own work.

Most journals publish papers behind paywalls, so institutions often have to pay for access to multiple journals or libraries of journals, depending on what they need. This puts researchers in a difficult position if they require a paper published in a journal that they do not have the funding to pay for a subscription to.

Sci-Hub is now hugely popular with the international academic community. Scholars who support Elbakyan's vision have either sent her .pdf copies of papers they have previously downloaded or secretly donated access keys to bypass various journal paywalls, which has enabled Sci-Hub to amass 58 million peer-reviewed research papers – a collection that continues to grow thanks to an automated system that searches and downloads papers as people request for them.

ACS owns 50 peer-reviewed journals, however the society points out that it is not a greedy publisher looking to benefit from researchers' work, but a nonprofit that uses the money from its open access licensing to support disadvantaged high school students, undergraduates and young teachers pursuing careers in chemistry. The society also awards over $20m a year in grants for basic research.

The society is asking the courts to find in its favour and order Sci-Hub to cease distributing copyrighted papers; to cease infringing its trademarks; to cease its false representation of the society; to pay damages; to pay ACS' legal fees; and to forfeit any revenues – i.e. bitcoin donations to help maintain Sci-Hub – garnered while illegally distributing ACS copyrighted materials.