Keeping Student Papers in Plagiarism Data Base OK
It is not a copyright violation for a plagiarism detection website to keep a copy of a student’s paper in its data base to use to check other students’ papers.
The case arose when high school students were required to submit their papers to iParadigms, an online service that compares the students’ papers to other published articles and other research papers to check for plagiarism. After checking the paper for originality using its data base, iParadigms adds an electronic copy of the paper in its data base to use to check other students’ papers. Four students sued, claiming that by retaining a copy of their papers in the data base for future use, iParadigms infringed on their copyrighted papers. The District Court granted summary judgment for iParadigms on the copyright claim.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the trial court that the archiving of the students’ papers was fair use in that it was using the papers for another purpose and not an infringement. The trial court found “that the use was transformative because its purpose was to prevent plagiarism by comparative use, and that iParadigms’ use of the student works did not impair the market value for high school term papers and other such student works.”
The students argued that iParadigms made commercial use of their papers by including them in the data base used to determine whether student papers were original. The students claimed the use in the data base could not be transformative because the papers were not altered by iParadigms. The appellate court disagreed. “The use of a copyrighted work need not alter or augment the work to be transformative in nature. Rather it can be transformative in function or purpose without altering or actually adding to the original work.” iParadigms used the papers for a different purpose—detecting and discouraging plagiarism, so the use was transformative, the court found.
The court found there was no infringement since iParadigms did not “publicly disseminate or display plaintiffs’ works and did not send them to any third party ‘other than the instructor to whom plaintiffs submitted their own papers.’”
A.V. et al v. iParadigms, LLC, 4th Cir. Court of Appeals, No. 07-CV-00293, issued April 16, 2009.