The Dublin-based nonprofit OCLC has filed a lawsuit against the company Baker & Taylor in the Southern District Court of Ohio over claims of interference with contracts and misuse of OCLC鈥檚 product, WorldCat. Both companies work with libraries, offering software, technology services and cataloging programs.
The suit was filed in late March and centers around OCLC鈥檚 product WorldCat, which is a cataloging program that has a database that includes scientific papers, music, articles and more than 400 million books. It鈥檚 used at many libraries and universities to find media and access scholarly articles.
The suit details a contentious relationship between OCLC and Baker & Taylor.
In 2002, OCLC hired the company Libros Sin Fronteras as consultants. OCLC claims that over time, records accessed by Libros Sin Fronteras 鈥渆xponentially increased.鈥� The increased activity, OCLC says, was beyond what Libros Sin Fronteras was contracted for, and in 2017, their access to WorldCat ended. Libros Sin Fronteras was owned by Baker & Taylor, which OCLC said it didn鈥檛 know when the two businesses started working together.
OCLC alleges that Baker & Taylor used Libros Sin Fronteras to gain access to WorldCat鈥檚 database.
After Libros Sin Fronteras lost access to WorldCat, Baker & Taylor allegedly asked for a license to WorldCat. A data licensing agreement was reached in 2019. The agreement allowed Baker & Taylor to extract and use up to 50,000 records per year.
According to the filing, two years later in 2021, OCLC discovered that Baker & Taylor was planning to launch BTCat, a competing library cataloging software. OCLC terminated the agreement with Baker & Taylor. After the agreement ended, OCLC claims that it found that Baker & Taylor was taking more than 50,000 records per year and 鈥渦nderreporting and misrepresenting to OCLC the scope of its downloads and other activities.鈥�
OCLC claims that in 2024, it found that BTCat 鈥渃ontains enriched and enhanced WorldCat records and associated data.鈥� This led OCLC to look into Baker & Taylor鈥檚 relationship with libraries that also used WorldCat. Through publicly available non-cataloging service contracts, OCLC found that part of Baker & Taylor鈥檚 contracts required libraries to provide access to all cataloging records. This would include access to WorldCat. The suit described this as a contractual backdoor to obtain WorldCat records.
This Baker & Taylor contract clause would also violate OCLC鈥檚 contracts with libraries. OCLC鈥檚 contract expressly prohibits libraries from sharing WorldCat鈥檚 data with companies or organizations that don鈥檛 have a license with OCLC.
OCLC said in its filing that 30 libraries have stopped using WorldCat in favor of BTCat, citing BTCat鈥檚 lower cost as a reason. OCLC knows of at least 14 more libraries that are considering stopping their contracts for WorldCat in favor of BTCat.
The suit states that WorldCat was directly responsible for 39% of OCLC鈥檚 revenue in the last five years, and indirectly responsible for 83% of revenue in the last five years.
OCLC鈥檚 lawsuit is seeking to have Baker & Taylor no longer use the records taken from WorldCat, to bar Baker & Taylor from being able to access WorldCat through library contracts, and to compensatory damages of at least $75,000.
OCLC released a on their website, saying they respect fair competition, but now feel the need to protect WorldCat and WorldCat鈥檚 database.
In a to OCLC鈥檚 statement and lawsuit, Baker & Taylor deny the allegations, calling them 鈥渇alse and damaging.鈥� Baker & Taylor also accused OCLC of not respecting fair competition, ending their statement with 鈥淢ake no mistake, in this dispute, Baker & Taylor is the one who is on the side of fair and healthy competition. Baker & Taylor respects OCLC鈥檚 right to fairly compete in the market, but the same cannot be said for OCLC.鈥�