In the winter of 2013, when the principal of Houston ISD’s Westside High School suggested making copies of colorful study guides recently purchased from a small Austin-area company, an English teacher responded that there was a “glaring disclaimer about copyright” at the bottom of the documents.

The teacher suggested the guides, which cost nearly $2,000 total, should be handed out during class and picked up before the final bell. But when the school’s principal brushed aside the copyright concerns, the teacher fell in line.

“I’m ok with violating it though…lol,” the teacher wrote in an email, according to a lawsuit.

The guide’s creator, DynaStudy, got the last laugh on Thursday, when a federal jury awarded the company $9.2-million after finding dozens of HISD employees repeatedly violated federal copyright laws pertaining to the guides. Jurors sided with DynaStudy on all counts following a seven-day trial, validating allegations that HISD staffers cropped out the company’s logo, hid copyright violation warnings and widely distributed the manipulated study guides to colleagues throughout the district.

The verdict offered a resounding victory to DynaStudy, a 13-year-old company with two full-time employees that has sold educational products to more than 650 Texas districts. DynaStudy first raised potential copyright issues with HISD in 2012, filed its lawsuit in 2016, then spent three years in litigation with the state’s largest school district.

“DynaStudy is inspired to return its energy and resources back to its mission of ‘evening the learning field’ by getting effective learning tools into the hands of students in Houston and across Texas,” the company’s owner, Ellen Harris, wrote in an email. “This verdict both affirms copyright law and enables DynaStudy to reimagine the best possible business model to accomplish its mission.”

In a statement Friday, HISD administrators said they are “reviewing the verdict to determine next steps.” They added that all employees now participate in online training on copyright laws at the beginning of each school year, with principals receiving additional in-person training.

“HISD certainly will be adding additional training and safeguards concerning the reproduction of copyrighted material going forward,” the statement read.

HISD administrators did not respond to questions about what source of funds would be used to pay the verdict. The district budgeted about $1.9 million in fiscal 2019 for liability insurance, though it’s not clear whether the insurance would cover the verdict.

HISD Board President Diana Dávila said a roughly $7 million verdict against the district in 2017 was paid from the reserve fund, but trustees did not know whether that would happen in the DynaStudy case.

“This is really going to hurt,” Dávila said. “We’re going to respect the jury’s decision on this, because apparently they saw something the district should not have done.”

Dávila declined to discuss the board’s approach to the DynaStudy litigation, which was discussed in private sessions. Trustees must approve legal settlements impacting the district, often in consultation with HISD lawyers.

Lawyers for the district offered multiple defenses for employees’ actions throughout the lawsuit: Staffers were not aware of copyright violations; educators engaged in “fair use” of reproduced copyrighted work; improperly published material was immediately removed from the Internet; and DynaStudy provided inaccurate information when seeking federal copyrights.

However, jurors found HISD employees violated copyright laws hundreds of times over a decade, improperly using 36 study guides created by DynaStudy. In its lawsuit, the company described various methods of skirting copyright rules, often validating the claims with email exchanges or Internet postings made by employees.

In one case, a teacher at Heights High School cropped off DynaStudy’s name and copyright warning from a biology guide, then shared the document with other HISD educators, according to the lawsuit. DynaStudy’s lawyers discovered the cropped document’s file name contained the phrase “Dyna notes Biology EOC,” a reference to “end of course” exams administered by the Texas Education Agency.

Ultimately, the altered biology guide reached districts from across the country. DynaStudy’s lawyers found the guide publicly posted online in 28 Texas school districts, as well as districts in Indiana, New Jersey and North Carolina.

In another case, a Northside High School teacher appeared to photocopy the same biology guide, using a pink sticky note to hide the copyright warning on the bottom of the document, according to the lawsuit. The copied guide circulated among HISD teachers for more than two years, DynaStudy lawyers said.

In a third case, DynaStudy alleged that a West Briar Middle School employee used white tape to hide copyright warnings on an eighth-grade science guide, then circulated the document more than 50 times over two years. A district teacher shared the file as recently as 2017 — after DynaStudy’s lawsuit was filed — in an email, asking an assistant principal for paper on which to print the modified guide.

Harris said companies such as DynaStudy “fill a wide gap between large textbook publishers and teacher-created materials,” assisting students and educators.

“DynaStudy is proud to have played a role in affirming the rights of copyright owners so that all these small companies and the authors to come can continue to create and contribute to the dynamic market for educational materials,” Harris said.

jacob.carpenter@chron.com