The CHE Tech Blog recently wrote about a lawsuit against Zotero. Apparently, Thomson Reuters has claimed that the folks behind Zotero have simply reverse engineered its EndNote tool and integrated it with their own free tool. As a fan of Zotero, this was disappointing to read. Even though I don’t use EndNote, this seems to have echoes of RIAA. Similar to the outcry against the RIAA, Zotero’s supporters have been quick to speak out against the suit. So is this RIAA all over again? Perhaps, not; some other pretty significant voices in the ed-tech world think Thomson Reuters might have a legitimate claim (e.g., Michael Feldstein). Even if Thomson Reuters has a legitimate claim, the lawsuit seems a little heavy-handed as a first move. Why not first just call and talk and see what happens? Probably naive on my part.
Filed under: Teaching, Tech , CHE, Reuters, RIAA, Thomson, Zotero
Please see his updated post, in which he is far less charitable to TR.
They did. But the Zotero devs hadn’t done what they were accused of & they didn’t think that TR had a good case to make them stop what they were actually doing. Thus, the lawyers at TR were not placated.
Thanks rick1717 for this helpful background information and Feldstein’s updated post.