November 20, 2009

Thomson Reuters (Scientific) Inc. [EndNote] v. George Mason University [Zotero]

NOTE: The information and commentary contained in this database entry are based on court filings and other informational sources that may contain unproven allegations made by the parties. The truthfulness and accuracy of such information is likely to be in dispute.

Posted October 10th, 2008 by Guest

Summary

Threat Type: Lawsuit	Date: 09/05/2008
Status: Pending	Location: Virginia
Disposition: Dismissed (total)	Verdict/Settlement Amount: n/a
Legal Claims: Breach of Contract
Thomson Reuters, creators of the commercial and proprietary EndNote reference management software, have filed suit against the Commonwealth of Virginia and George Mason University, whose Center for History and New Media created the free and open source Zotero reference manager... read full description

Parties

Party Issuing Legal Threat:	Party Receiving Legal Threat:
Thomson Reuters (Scientific) Inc.	David A. Von Moll, Comptroller of the Commonwealth of Virginia; George Mason University
Type of Party:	Type of Party:
Large Organization	Government; School
Location of Party:	Location of Party:
Pennsylvania; Connecticut	Virginia
Legal Counsel:	Legal Counsel:
Gary H. Nones (of Womble Carlyle, Sandridge & Rice); Barry Kramer, Glenn G. Pudelka (of Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge)	David Drummey (for Defendent George Mason University)

Description

Thomson Reuters, creators of the commercial and proprietary EndNote reference management software, have filed suit against the Commonwealth of Virginia and George Mason University, whose Center for History and New Media created the free and open source Zotero reference manager that plugs into Mozilla Firefox.

Thomson seeks ten million dollars ($10,000,000) in damages and an injunction, alleging that their site-license agreement with George Mason University was violated. Thomson claims that a beta version of Zotero is able to convert their undocumented binary.ens file format for citation styling into the open xml-based Citation Style Language (CSL) and that they encouraged their users to perform this conversion, sharing the CSL files with each other and that George Mason University distributed such files. Third parties have commented that one beta version of Zotero was able to read and use .ens files as-is and that the Zotero developers did not implement conversion over copyright concerns.

Thomson's complaint states that GMU reverse engineered or de-compiled the EndNote software and are distributing a derivative of EndNote. Third parties have commented that only the .ens file format needed to be analyzed in order to create this compatibility feature, and that Zotero, a javascript and xul plugin, is quite different from EndNote, a more conventional executable. Thomson further complains that their trademark "EndNote" is used to describe this feature. Thomson requested a jury trial. An extension was recently granted. Thomson discreetly changed their licensing terms for their style files on their website sometime this year, according to the Internet Archive's WayBack Machine. They recently added a click-through agreement for any downloadable content for EndNote.

Update:

6/4/09 - Court dismissed the suit. [We'll link to the order when we get it]

Ownership of EndNote Style Files

Submitted by Guest (not verified) on Thu, 10/23/2008 - 22:46.

Bruce D'Arcus points to a post in the EndNote forums from a Thomson employee, claiming that they own and can constrain the use and distribution of user-generated style files.

think you mean discreetly,

Submitted by Guest (not verified) on Fri, 10/24/2008 - 09:54.

think you mean discreetly, not discretely.

Thanks

Submitted by David Ardia on Fri, 10/24/2008 - 11:40.

You're right. We've made the fix.

Transferred to Fairfax (VA) Circuit Court

Submitted by Peter Murray on Fri, 02/13/2009 - 11:44.

The Viriginia court case information system shows that this case has been transferred to another jurisdiction. According to the clerk at the Circuit Court, City of Richmond, it was transferred to Fairfax. Unfortunately, for those interested in following the status of this case remotely, the trail seems to go cold there because there isn't an online courts records system for the Fairfax Circuit Court.

Case Dismissed!

Submitted by karnesky on Thu, 06/04/2009 - 14:47.

Sean Takats has some good news on his blog.

Details would be appreciated!

Submitted by Peter Murray on Thu, 06/04/2009 - 18:48.

If anyone could get copies of the dismissal order plus any accompanying documentation and post it online, I'd greatly appreciate it.

A few more deails

Submitted by karnesky on Fri, 06/12/2009 - 13:15.

@Peter: pinged you at your blog, but Sean has a few more dismissal details. Dismissed, without prejudice, due to lack of jurisdiction.

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