Thomson Reuters Lawsuit Dismissed

I’m delighted to announce that this morning the Fairfax Circuit Court dismissed the lawsuit filed against Zotero by Thomson Reuters. The lawsuit had claimed that the Center for History and New Media “reverse-engineered” Thomson Reuters’s EndNote software to provide data interoperability between Zotero and EndNote.

As co-director of the Zotero project along with Dan Cohen, I look forward to witnessing the Zotero team now devote its full attention to crafting the pathbreaking new features that are immediately on the development horizon: customized research recommendations, innovative annotation tools, and pioneering collaborative functionality.

It’s worth noting that even while the lawsuit was underway over the last nine months, Zotero geniuses completed the implementation of such radical new functionality as cloud-based synchronization, shared group libraries, PDF metadata detection, automatic proxy support, live CVs, and much more. And our amazing community performed this heavy lifting all while supporting a user base that has grown into the millions. I can only imagine what the Zotero project will be able to achieve unimpeded!

Trackbacks & Pings

  1. Thompson Reuters Lawsuit Against Zotero Creators Dismissed | Disruptive Library Technology Jester on 04 Jun 2009 at 6:44 pm

    [...] Reported by Zotero co-director Sean Takats, tweeted by CHNM director Dan Cohen, and noted on DLTJ by Rick, Thomson-Reuters’ lawsuit against George Mason University has been dismissed. The details are sparse at the moment, but it would appear that the creators of Zotero have prevailed over the creators of EndNote. Sean’s post has the most information. (The Fairfax (VA) Circuit Court website really stinks in terms of disseminating information about the proceedings of the court.1 ) If the details are interesting, and I somehow expect they might be, I’ll post them here.FootnotesThe procedures bear a striking resemblance to Arthur Dent’s comment in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’.” That is neither here nor there, though. [?] [...]

  2. Library Intelligencer » Thomson Reuters’s lawsuit against Zotero on 04 Jun 2009 at 7:10 pm

    [...]  http://quintessenceofham.org/2009/06/04/… [...]

  3. Tama Leaver dot Net » Thomson Reuters/Endnote sue George Mason Uni over Zotero! on 04 Jun 2009 at 9:50 pm

    [...] (5 June 2009): “I’m delighted to announce that this morning the Fairfax Circuit Court dismissed the lawsuit filed …” addthis_url = [...]

  4. Case against Zotero dismissed | Libraries Interact on 04 Jun 2009 at 11:45 pm

    [...] In news just to hand, the lawsuit filed by Thomson Reuters (EndNote) against Zotero has been dismissed. [...]

  5. Tre goda Zotero-nyheter | Mothugg on 05 Jun 2009 at 4:33 am

    [...] har arkiverat Thomsons (Endnote) stämning mot Zotero i papperskorgen (via [...]

  6. Odds & Ends & Useful Bits on 05 Jun 2009 at 9:42 am

    [...] Endnote in order to make it possible to import and export citations between programs was dismissed by a judge. This is good news for innovation. More from the Jester, and a hat tip to Inside Higher Ed, which [...]

  7. Thomson Reuters’ Lawsuit Against Zotero Dismissed @ <CONTENT /> v.5 on 05 Jun 2009 at 10:55 am

    [...] online research, has seen millions of downloads. Zotero project co-director Sean Takats’s announcement is pretty heartwarming. No comment as yet from Thomson [...]

  8. Thomson Reuters Lawsuit Dismissed at The Quintessence of Ham :: in propria persona on 05 Jun 2009 at 7:21 pm

    [...] Thomson Reuters Lawsuit Dismissed at The Quintessence of Ham.While some are billing this as a victory for open-source software – which, in some sense at least, [...]

  9. Bread and Circuits » George Mason University sued over Zotero on 05 Jun 2009 at 8:57 pm

    [...] (June 5, 2009): thankfully, justice has been served.  [...]

  10. EduPatent Updates on 06 Jun 2009 at 9:13 am

    [...] 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 [...]

  11. Liberal Education Today : Zotero suit called off on 07 Jun 2009 at 9:10 am

    [...] lawsuit filed against an academic browser extension has been ended.  A Virginia judge dismissed Thompson Reuters’ legal action against Zotero, a bibliography [...]

  12. Tama Leaver dot Net » Annotated Digital Culture Links: June 8th 2009 on 08 Jun 2009 at 3:58 am

    [...] Thomson Reuters Lawsuit Dismissed [The Quintessence of Ham] – “I’m delighted to announce that this morning the Fairfax Circuit Court dismissed the lawsuit filed against Zotero by Thomson Reuters. … It’s worth noting that even while the lawsuit was underway over the last nine months, Zotero geniuses completed the implementation of such radical new functionality as cloud-based synchronization, shared group libraries, PDF metadata detection, automatic proxy support, live CVs, and much more. And our amazing community performed this heavy lifting all while supporting a user base that has grown into the millions. I can only imagine what the Zotero project will be able to achieve unimpeded!” addthis_url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tamaleaver.net%2F2009%2F06%2F08%2Fannotated-digital-culture-links-june-8th-2009%2F’; addthis_title = ‘Annotated+Digital+Culture+Links%3A+June+8th+2009′; addthis_pub = ‘tamaleaver’; [...]

  13. Random thoughts + opinions on 10 Jun 2009 at 8:33 am

    Victory for Zotero!…

    A truly great program that make academia that little bit easier
    ……

  14. Panlibus » Blog Archive » Thomson Reuters – Zotero Case Dismissed on 11 Jun 2009 at 1:13 pm

    [...] good news, as Sean Takats reports on his Quintessence of Ham blog, the Fairfax Circuit Court dismissed the lawsuit. As co-director of [...]

  15. Zotero is magic for saving, organizing, and sharing documents on the web | OverExpressed on 19 Jul 2009 at 8:13 pm

    [...] Backed into a corner by an obviously superior product, EndNote even lashed out with a lawsuit that was ultimately dismissed.  So unless you want to spend a lot of money on a broken product, I [...]

  16. Random MomBlog :: Endnote v. Zotero :: August :: 2009 on 04 Aug 2009 at 2:24 pm

    [...] Thomson Reuters Lawsuit Dismissed blog post at The Quintessence of Ham: I’m delighted to announce that this morning the Fairfax Circuit Court dismissed the lawsuit [...]

  17. ZOTERO rocks….but not everyone wants to tell you this | kiddingthecity [dot] org on 31 Oct 2009 at 1:57 pm

    [...] is very relevant, I think, to look into the lawsuit that Thomson moved to George Mason Uni, on the blog of the co-director of the Zotero project, Sean Takats, Assistant Professor at the above Centre. In [...]

Comments

  1. Brian Croxall wrote:

    Congratulations to you all! This is wonderful news. Full steam ahead.

  2. Bruce wrote:

    So where’s the “details” (about the dismissal itself)?

    [We expect to have a transcript from the court reporter early next week and will have further information then. Apologies for the delay. -Sean]

  3. Chris Keene wrote:

    Great news! thanks for letting us all know.

    Chris
    (PS hoping to get Aquabrowser and Zotero working happily together one day)

  4. Mark Tebeau wrote:

    great news!

  5. Anirvan Chatterjee wrote:

    Congrats!

  6. Paul Albert wrote:

    Super job. Keep it up!!!

  7. sky wrote:

    Excellent! I’ve been telling students and other postgraduates about Zotero, so I’m glad to hear that this cloud hanging over it has faded. Zotero’s been such a great help in writing my PhD, thank you.

  8. datamuse wrote:

    Really glad to read this!

  9. narles wrote:

    As a recent graduate from George Mason University, I am extremely glad to hear that this ridiculous lawsuit has been dismissed. It would have saddened me very much to hear about my school being forced to pay thousands (maybe millions) of dollars to some money-grubbing corporation just because they were afraid of advancement in the field that they compete in for business. As an aside, great work, Zotero team! Keep it up!

  10. Maria Droujkova wrote:

    Congratulations!!! When I first installed Zotero, I was so delighted by the features, details of implementation, the ease and the natural feel of everything – I literally cried out “Oh this is great!” every few minutes, so family would come to investigate. I have a lot of respect for Zotero team. Cheers!

  11. Miladinoski wrote:

    This is another great win of OSS software!

    Keep up the great work! :)

  12. nicolas wrote:

    I ditched their reuters terminal in favor of Bloomberg only because of this (15kEUR a year) .

    Also, I will encourage my coworkers to do the same.

    This kind of predatory behaviour is not acceptable.

    Keep up the good work, what you do is very useful.

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