Copyscape

History

Functionality

Reported use in plagiarism cases

• On March 18, 2005, Copyscape was reported as the means used to search the Internet for unauthorized use of materials in the case of Brayton Purcell LLP vs. Recordon & Recordon, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. According to Brayton Purcell, Copyscape was used to search the Internet for unauthorized use of materials on October 7, 2004. On August 6, 2009, Copyscape was cited as the means used to detect plagiarism before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
• On April 6, 2005, Arve Bersvendsen, a Norwegian Web developer, used Copyscape to find a copy of a CSS tutorial he wrote posted on a site owned by Apple Inc. Bersvendsen claimed that Apple had infringed his copyright, and the content in question was immediately removed.
• On October 17, 2005, Paul Litterick of the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists used Copyscape to analyze Bruce Logan's published newspaper work, setting off a plagiarism scandal. Litterick found that some of Logan's work was taken from Anglo-American sources, including The Heritage Foundation, the Conservative Christian Fellowship, the Institute for American Values, Digby Anderson of the Social Affairs Unit and writers Maggie Gallagher and Melanie Phillips. Litterick published the results in the Fundy Post. Logan retired from the Maxim Institute one month later.
• On December 9, 2005, Richard Stiennon, a writer at ZDNet, used Copyscape to find six Web sites that had stolen and re-published an ISP business plan he had written.