College Tutoring Bureau Closes for Good; Settles Law-Suit by Macmillan Company

The College Tutoring Bureau shut its doors Saturday afternoon, never again to do business in Cambridge, as a result of an agreement signed by Macmillan Company and the tutoring school settling out-of-court the contempt proceedings brought by the publishing firm.

Largest of the Harvard Square dealers in tutoring notes, the College Tutoring Bureau with University Tutors, which went out of business last fall, supplied 38 per cent of all student-bought notes last year.

A signal victory for Macmillan Company, the agreement makes unnecessary further prosecution of the court action which was started Tuesday, April 24. At that time the publishing house asked in a motion filed with the U. S. District Court of Massachusetts that Joseph H. Hurvitz and Abraham Segel, proprietors of the tutoring school, be held in contempt of court for violating a decree of May 24, 1933 enjoining them from further infractions of the copyrights on certain of Macmillan's books.

It is understood that Hurvitz and Segel admit that they have violated the 1933 decree by pirating these books in their tutoring notes and outlines. Macmillan Company stated Saturday that Hurvitz and Segel promised to have their Harvard Square office closed before today and never again to operate in Cambridge.

Agreeing never to infringe Macmillan Company's copyrights, Hurvitz and Segel reserved the right to carry on elsewhere than in Cambridge a "legitimate" business in notes and outlines of non-copyrighted books.

Notes Will Be Destroyed

According to the settlement, Hurvitz and Segel will destroy all notes and stencils which Macmillan Company feels violated copyrights on its books. No money for damages was provided for in the agreement, but Hurvitz and Segel promised to pay $1,000 for any violations of the settlement which may occur in the future.

Declining to comment on the settlement, Hurvitz was silent yesterday about his plans.

The court order which Hurvitz and Segel admitted in the settlement to have violated was obtained in 1933 from U. S. District Judge Elisha H. Brewster by Macmillan Company in conjunction with Houghton, Mifflin Company, Ginn and Company, and Harper Brothers. Some of their books and had been pirated by the College Tutoring Bureau.

Besides his injunction ordering the tutoring school to refrain from future violations of the copyrights on these books, Judge Brewster awarded damages totaling $1,000 which were divided among the four publishing firms.

Preliminary hearings were to have been today on Macmillan Company's motion. Filed Tuesday, April 23, it legally was merely another step in the 1933 case. It asked the court to order Hurvitz and Segel "to show cause" why they should not be held in contempt of court for violating the 1933 decree.

If Hurvitz and Segel had decided to fight the case and had been found guilty, they might have received a heavy penalty, either a fine or prison sentence.