Chronicle of Higher Education/The Wired Campus blog
September 29, 2008

Thomson Reuters Inc. sued George Mason University in a Virginia court this month, arguing that a free software tool made by the university makes improper use of the company’s EndNote citation software.

The company’s complaint argues that programmers at George Mason’s Center for History and New Media reverse-engineered EndNote to create a free program called Zotero. The university’s free software is a plug-in for the Firefox Web browser, and it is designed to help scholars store and organize their online research. It has been downloaded more than 1 million times.

Thomson Reuters argues that the latest release of George Mason’s software, which can import files created by EndNote and turn them into files that can be used and shared online using Zotero, “is willfully and intentionally destroying Thomson’s customer base for the EndNote software.” The company seeks $10-million in damages for each year the university has offered the software and to stop the university from distributing versions of Zotero that can convert EndNote files.

The Web site for Zotero boasts that the software “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).”

Dan Cohen, director of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, declined to comment on the lawsuit, citing advice from his lawyer. Officials from Thomson Reuters also declined to comment. —Jeffrey R. Young

Posted on Monday September 29, 2008 | Permalink |