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This is spectacular. Do you want to see the claim?:
Thomson […] claims that Zotero is causing its commercial business "irr
eparable harm" and is wilfully and intentionally destroying Thomson’s customer base. In particular, Thomson is demanding that GMU stop distributing the newer beta-version of Zotero that allegedly allows EndNote’s proprietary data format for storing journal citation styles to be converted into an open-standard format readable by Zotero and other software. Thomson claims that Zotero "reverse engineered or decompiled" not only the format, but also the EndNote software itself.
So, if a proprietary software gets an open source competitor that does beat it in many aspects, the best solution is suing it.
I’m an endNote user, mainly because I have already lots of text with endNote references. But endNote bothers me with new upgrades that are expensive, but add little. If you are a zotero user, I do hope you can help its authors to keep doing what they do: create outstanding software.
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AMA citation:
Quesada J. Thomson Research (EndNote) sues Zotero (!). Academic Productivity. 2008. Available at: https://academicproductivity.com/2008/thomson-research-endnote-sues-zotero/. Accessed August 23, 2011.
APA citation:
Quesada, Jose. (2008). Thomson Research (EndNote) sues Zotero (!). Retrieved August 23, 2011, from Academic Productivity Web site: https://academicproductivity.com/2008/thomson-research-endnote-sues-zotero/
Chicago citation:
Quesada, Jose. 2008. Thomson Research (EndNote) sues Zotero (!). Academic Productivity. https://academicproductivity.com/2008/thomson-research-endnote-sues-zotero/ (accessed August 23, 2011).
Harvard citation:
Quesada, J 2008, Thomson Research (EndNote) sues Zotero (!), Academic Productivity. Retrieved August 23, 2011, from
MLA citation:
Quesada, Jose. "Thomson Research (EndNote) sues Zotero (!)." 14 Oct. 2008. Academic Productivity. Accessed 23 Aug. 2011.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 at 9:56 pm and is filed under Software, Web 2.0, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
October 14th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
Apparently Thomson would rather sue than build a competent product.
I switched a few months ago – Zotero integrates with everything, making research easy and painless. More importantly it was able to load my endnotes export so that I haven’t lost anything.
When Zotero gets to the point that you can share a library with collaborators it will have far surpassed Endnote. I’m never going back.
(Frankly, I would PAY for Zotero if that’s what it takes… It is a better product…)
October 15th, 2008 at 3:19 am
Yep, I concur. This is just silly.
I hope Zotero has the ability to fight this fight, as I use it extensively right now!
October 15th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
I switched from Endnote to Zotero ten months ago, and have never since considered going back. With its organizing and notetaking features it has been so good for my productivity.
Rebecca, note that sharing of collections is probably coming in a few weeks with the release of Zotero 1.5.
October 15th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
I’m also an Endnote user, and this just makes me mad. I think an appropriate response might be for those of us who are Endnote users to let Thompson know that we are not particularly happy with these actions. Honestly, it makes me want to not give them any more of my money and investigate switching to something like Zotero now.
October 15th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Despite this being new news, this is actually the reason I never used EndNote in the first place. Knowing that it uses a proprietary format, I was worried about always being locked in, so I used Bibdesk at first and then effortlessly converted to Zotero later. (It took me less than a minute.)
Why would I use something that I knew would be impossible to stop using when there are adequate, open alternatives?
October 15th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
Why would I use something that I knew would be impossible to stop using when there are adequate, open alternatives?
Well, I don’t mind the proprietary format–I was willing to make that trade for what Endnote offered at the time. You can have a proprietary format and not go after open source competitors by trying to sue them out of existence rather then producing a good product.
October 16th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
I have to admit that I only got into this business about 5 years ago. I wasn’t around at any point that where EndNote was the only good option.
October 25th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
I use Zotero because it works really well for me on my Linux system, so I’m not surprised to learn that the consumerist software model is attacking the (in my opinion) better option. Hopefully Zotero can survive this, but I think that is unlikely because money trumps all.
October 27th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
As a Zotero user, an Endnote user, and a student at GMU, I have two things to say:
1) As a student of law and economics, I must stress the case, as you’ve quoted it, is over reverse-engineering proprietary data structure. This is equivalent to someone reverse engineering a pharmaceutical drug, or stealing the design of your website, or its content, and relabelling it as their own. While this may increase “wealth” in the short run, in the long run it serves to undermine the incentive to create. Anything.
2) Zotero is superior. Endnote allows you to export to CSV (or some other text format, I forget), which you can then import into Zotero. This extra step allows inter-operability without breaking intellectual property law. Endnote users and Zotero users independently want these features (text-based databases for programs like BibTeX). The fact that they can cross over is a by-product, and a wealth-increasing one at that (we’re all better off).
October 28th, 2008 at 2:08 am
Jeffrey, is that your interpretation of the article? I got from it that it would be under contract law.
FTA: Thomson is claiming on the grounds that GMU has a site licence to EndNote, and that Zotero’s actions breach the terms of the licensing contract. Thomson did not challenge GMU on grounds of copyright law, in which certain protections are in place to allow for creating interoperability. Thomson also claims that Zotero is infringing on the trademark ‘EndNote’ to induce Zotero users to convert EndNote’s proprietary style files.
October 28th, 2008 at 5:57 am
Bob (?),
Thanks for the question. As I’ve learned intellectual property law, there are several classes of IP:
1) Copyright
2) Patent
3) Trademark
4) others
Each are governed by different laws, common or legislated. They are all under the umbrella of IP.
You are correct to point out that development of Zotero breached contract terms set forth in the site license (probably along the lines of not endorsing competing products, though I have *not* looked at the specifics). This falls under contract law, of course, and Thomson would and should be compensated if GMU is in breach. However, as I understand it, a department (the history department? some department under the College of Humanities) developed this as its own project, using resources available through the university. I doubt developing a rival product is against the contract, since this would essentially be a restraint on competition, and we wander into antitrust territory (or at least anti-competitive practices–other anti-competitive practices, including retail price fixing–the reason for M*S*RP–and product bundling, are often litigated).
But I digress. It seems from the statement you’ve quoted that there is a *second* claim against GMU, one of infringing trademark. These cases fall under IP but are difficult to litigate, since well-known trademarks often become proxy-words for generic products (Band Aid, Kleenex, Listerine, etc, etc.). I don’t specialize in either area, nor do I specialize in law, but it’s something I’ve studied extensively to this point and know just enough to form an opinion.
Cheers!
October 28th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Jeffrey,
Thanks for the response. It would be interesting to see what’s in their actual site license agreement. Presumably GMU would have gotten some sort of discount, and this may have been in return for giving up certain rights.
That’s a good point regarding anti-competitive practices though. It would seem that they would be arguing against themselves in that way. That said, you would presume their own lawyers would have seen that. (Maybe not.)
Regarding the trademark infringement, I too am doubtful that they have a case there. I’ve never seen Zotero do anything to cause confusion in my mind.
It will be interesting to see what happens here.
-Bob
October 29th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
No–content is typically expressive & merits a copyright. Citation formatting is making trivial recipes that are patterned after styles displayed by particular publishers. Having made citation styles myself, I an of the opinion that they probably can’t carry a copyright (though I apply a creative commons license “just in case I am wrong”).
Furthermore, stealing design or content an relabeling it is plagiarism. There is none in this case–that Zotero used the trademark “EndNote” to describe the ability to use .ens files as-is is part of the complaint.
This is somewhat analogous to OpenOffice.org and Google Docs being able to read the previously undocumented Microsoft Office formats (those formats are more complex & the other products can convert and write to the undocumented formats, though).
In any case, interoperability improves system efficiency.
BibTeX and RIS are the textual formats you can import into Zotero. But the bibliographic data has nothing to do with this case.
As you later commented, they are accused of breaching contract; there is no evidence that they actually did & it has been pointed out many places that the Thomson Reuters complaint is wrong about many things.
Actually, it is still a contract complaint–the complaint alleges that the contract put additional limitations on what could be done with the EndNote trademark. Of any complaints, I think that this is one of the more valid ones–while the use of the term does not create confusion, the contract does explicitly limit use of the term to an even greater extent. I don’t think this caused $10M of real and substantive damages & it shouldn’t warrant an injunction, though.
The complaint has excerpts of said agreement, but I agree that picking apart the whole thing would be nice.
November 24th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
They still think the litigation is their best option:
http://scientific.thomsonreuters.com/press/2008/8488342/
November 25th, 2008 at 8:47 am
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