p2pnet - rss feed: EndNote sues George Mason U over Zotero
p2pnet news view P2P:- George Mason University’s “Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources,” says the site. “It lives right where you do your work — in the web browser itself.”
But according to Thomson Reuters, the free and open source application, “willfully and intentionally destroying Thomson’s customer base for the EndNote software.”
So the company is now demanding $10-million in damages for each year the university has offered the software, and to stop it from distributing versions of Zotero that can convert EndNote files, says Wired Campus.
Programmers at George Mason’s Center for History and New Media reverse-engineered EndNote to create Zotero, the university’s free plug-in for the Firefox Web browser, designed to help scholars store and organize their online research, says the story.
Thomson Reuters is demanding the payment because it says Zotero can import files created by EndNote and turn them into files that can be used and shared online using Zotero.
Promises Zotero on its site:
“An extension to the popular open-source web browser Firefox, Zotero includes the best parts of older reference manager software (like EndNote) — the ability to store author, title, and publication fields and to export that information as formatted references — and the best parts of modern software and web applications (like iTunes and del.icio.us), such as the ability to interact, tag, and search in advanced ways.”
Wired Campus - Maker of EndNote Citation Software Sues George Mason U., September 29, 2008
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September 30th, 2008 at 10:39 am
Let us have a moment of silence for the spirit of free market competition.
September 30th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
“Let us have a moment of silence for the spirit of free market competition.”
Excellent comment. Short and directly to the point.
What is the basis for this suit? Last time I checked ‘building a better mouse trap’ is not illegal.
They are not accusing GMU of violating any ‘Imaginary Property’ laws?
Since when has “willfully and intentionally destroying [a] customer base” become actionable? I thought such activity was called competition.
Apparently the legal geniuses (IMO rabid weasels) don’t remember any of the spreadsheet litigation in the 80’s such as Visicalc v Lotus and Lotus v everybody. In those actions the defendants were accused of Copyright infringement although it was really User Interface cloning and the ability to read files. The courts decided that, except under certain very limited conditions, UI design is not protected by by Copyright.
And as far as reading files, there is a clause somewhere in USC Title 17 that clearly states that computer file formats are not protected by Copyright. If this were not so, Microsoft would have sued Star Division (StarOffice), Sun (StarOffice), and OpenOffice long ago.
IMNSHO, this is vexatious litigation and should be sanctioned as such.
Disclaimer: IANAL and this is not legal advice. Anyone taking legal advice from a Silly Ratfaced Git probably needs help other than legal.
SRG