By Blake Brittain

March 5 (Reuters) - Education software company Learneo must pay a Connecticut university $75.3 million in damages, a federal jury said after finding that Learneo's Course Hero platform violated the school's copyrights covering course documents.

Post University convinced the Hartford, Connecticut jury on Wednesday that Learneo, which also owns study-guide company CliffsNotes, broke U.S. copyright law by hosting and altering the school's course files.

A Learneo spokesperson confirmed the verdict on Thursday and said the company will appeal.

"While this damage award is only 1% of what Post was seeking, it is still unsupported by law or fact," the spokesperson said, adding that Learneo has policies and procedures in place allowing rightsholders to remove any copyrighted materials.

Post's general counsel Kimber Summers said in a statement that the verdict "sends a clear message: educational content cannot be taken, altered, and sold without permission."

San Francisco-based Learneo hosts millions of school documents on Course Hero, including study guides and syllabi uploaded by students. In addition to CliffsNotes, the company owns AI-powered writing companion QuillBot, proofreading service Scribbr and other education resources.

Post University, a for-profit school in Waterbury, Connecticut, sued Learneo in 2021. It said Course Hero violated copyright law by hosting thousands of the school's files and wrongfully altering them to identify the company as their copyright holder.

Learneo denied the allegations.

The case is Post University Inc v. Learneo Inc, U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, No. 3:21-cv-01242.

For Post: Yonaton Aronoff, Alisha McCarthy, Ashley Robinson and Jaclyn Newman of Harris St. Laurent & Wechsler; Benjamin Lehberger of Dilworth IP

For Learneo: Gene Novikov, Joseph Gratz and Ramsey Fisher of Morrison & Foerster