Statement From Thomson Reuters Regarding Lawsuit Concerning George Mason University's Zotero Software
Philadelphia , PA - October 29, 2008 — The Scientific business of Thomson Reuters has initiated a law suit against George Mason University (GMU) because of violations of the terms and conditions of the EndNote® Desktop license agreement.
Thomson Reuters VP, Business Strategy and Development, Dave Kochalko said, "Simply put, we strongly believe that the creators of Zotero have reverse engineered our software code which enables EndNote's bibliographic formatting capability. These format files only exist as software code; there is no content or information independent of lines of code and these files can only be interpreted by the computer. A key value of EndNote is its ability to format a bibliography within a manuscript and the format files are integral to that capability. We have talented employees who have invested many years in building this resource for the EndNote community."
Kochalko added, "We are absolutely a proponent of interoperability and easy data sharing provided contracts are not breached and intellectual property is respected. We have worked diligently over the past several months to resolve this matter amicably. Since it has become clear that a resolution is not possible at this time, we have no choice but to pursue litigation in order to protect our intellectual property, as well as protect our bibliographic formatting capability, an important publishing resource our EndNote user-community has relied upon for many years."
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