Dallas council members have voted to pay up to a $100,00 settlement to an EMS trainer that sued the city and Dallas Fire Rescue for alleged copyright violations.
There was no discussion about the settlement — which is not unusual with these types of city payouts — during Wednesday’s city council meeting.
Jon Puryear, an EMS provider, sued the city last year over training materials for students looking to take certification tests to become first responders.
Puryear’s lawsuit against the city alleged that two Dallas Fire Rescue employees copied protected EMS training materials and distributed them on flash drives to students.
“A whistleblower in the class reported the infringement to Puryear and provided him with one of the drives,” the lawsuit’s original complaint alleged.
The lawsuit goes on to allege that one DFR employee gained access to the training materials with a limited license — the way Puryear had intended. But then the employee “circumvented [Puryear’s] security system to obtain unauthorized digital copies of the curriculum.”
After the materials were alleged copied, they were given to another DFR employee who was instructed to give the flash drives to students. The lawsuit does not detail how the employee got around security measures to copy the materials.
The flash drives contained videos from Puryear’s training curriculum — but not in their complete form.
“Notably the missing video from the 16-part series is the introductory video that contains the copyright warning and the instructions the video cannot be copied without permission.”
After being tipped off by the whistleblower, Puryear reported the issue to the EMS Academic Chair and Program Director.
“The students were told to return the flash drives because the flash drives had a virus,” the lawsuit alleges. “It is unknown how many of the flash drives were actually returned.”
Puryear’s lawsuit was one of three that the Dallas City Council voted unanimously to approve settlements for on Wednesday. The city could be on the hook to pay up to $212,000 for all three.
Got a tip? Email Nathan Collins at ncollins@kera.org. You can follow Nathan on Twitter @nathannotforyou.
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