Patent Law

Turnitin beats students over copyright issue in ED Va

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

Judge Claude M. Hilton, of the U. S. District Court in Alexandria, Va. [ED Va], found that scanning the student papers for the purpose of detecting plagiarism is a "highly transformative" use that falls under the fair-use provision of copyright law. He ruled that the company "makes no use of any work's particular expressive or creative content beyond the limited use of comparison with other works," and that the new use "provides a substantial public benefit."

(...)

The decision could bode well for Google. The company has been sued by groups representing publishers and authors who argue that the company is violating their copyrights by digitizing their books without express permission. Google contends that, because its digital copies are for the purpose of providing an index, it is essentially transforming the material.

See IPBiz post:
ED Va: not a rocket docket for copyright/turnitin?

Full post as published by IPBiz on March 26, 2008 (boomark / email).