Court dismisses lawsuit over anti-plagiarism software
Four Virginia and Arizona high school students hoping to score a legal hit against Turnitin have been rebuffed: a federal district court judge in Virginia recently threw out their lawsuit, ruling that the plagiarism detection company does not violate the copyright of students, even though it stores digital copies of their essays to check future submissions for academic dishonesty. The suit began in October 2006 when students belonging to a self-styled “Committee for Students' Rights” at McLean High School in Virginia argued that when Turnitin's parent, iParadigms, retained their assigned papers in its databases, that practice constituted copyright infringement. In his opinion, Judge Claude Hilton of the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that fair use was not violated because under federal law, the unauthorized use of copyrighted work for purposes such as teaching, scholarship, and research “is not an infringement of copyright." Fair use allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders. The judge also addressed the students' claim that they were forced to submit their work to Turnitin by school rules. "Schools have a right to decide how to monitor and address plagiarism in their schools and may employ companies like iParadigms to help do so," he wrote. "As the Supreme Court has recognized in the constitutional context, 'the rights of students in public school are not automatically coextensive with the rights of adults in other settings' and 'the rights of students must be applied in light of the special characteristics of the school environment.'"
Source: School Library Journal, 3/31/08, By Joan Oleck
[Editor’s Note: The court’s opinion and background on the suit are below.]
A.V. v. iParadigms, LLC, No. 07-0293 (E.D. Va. Mar. 11, 2008)
NSBA School Law pages on student Turnitin lawsuit