On the one hand, Thomson Reuters’ lawsuit against Zotero has been dismissed. Details are scant at this point. We don’t yet know the grounds for dismissal or whether Thomson Reuters will pursue other legal action. On the other hand, the U.S. International Trade Commission has agreed to investigate whether Desire2Learn is violating trade laws with patent infringement on some of the claims in Blackboard’s original ‘138 patent.
Tag: Zotero
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Thomson Suing Zotero: More Info and More Thoughts
Stephen Downes and Scott Leslie have both expressed concern that my original post regarding the Zotero lawsuit was possibly too charitable toward Thomson Reuters. Sadly, as more information comes in, it’s beginning to look like they were right.
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Thomson Suing Zotero
There’s been a fair bit of buzz, both on some edublogs I respect and in the Sakai listserv, about Thomson Reuters suing George Mason University, alleging that the Zotero team illegally reverse engineered EndNote. My initial reaction to Thomson’s move was very negative and my final reaction may be equally negative. Even casual readers of this blog know that I am not a big fan of using intellectual property as an anti-competitive bludgeon in an already thin educational software market. I’m also not a big fan of the DMCA, a draconian law that goes way too far in an effort to stop piracy.
However, I am withholding judgment at the moment because, after reading Thomson Reuters’ complaint, I think that it actually may have significant merit.