Thomson Reuters Sues Over Open-Source Endnote-Alike Zotero

Noksagt writes "Thomson Reuters, the owner of the Endnote reference management software, has filed a $10 million lawsuit and a request for injunction against the Commonwealth of Virginia. Virginia's George Mason University develops Zotero, a free and open source plugin to Mozilla Firefox that researchers may use to manage citations. Thomson alleges that GMU's Center for History and New Media reverse engineered Endnote and that the beta version of Zotero can convert (in violation of the Endnote EULA) the proprietary style files that are used by Endnote to format citations into the open CSL file format."

"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

I hoped that I kept the article summary relatively free of my personal opinion, which I will indulge in this comment:

Thomson Reuters has too many asshats.

Let us set aside the fact that academic software and those who develop academic software should embrace interoperability and knowledge sharing.

I'll even set aside that, despite the (rewritten) title, Zotero has many fundamental differences from EndNote.

The complaint is, in the words of Bruce D'Arcus, [muohio.edu] "a nuisance lawsuit designed to intimidate." Zotero's style repository [zotero.org] contains no EndNote .ens styles and seems to contain no styles derived from those styles. CSL styles are created manually [zotero.org] and through an online style creator [somwhere.org]. There is no way to get a new CSL style from an .ens file--the Zotero beta had mapped fields internally to allow .ens files to be used independently of CSL (but even this feature has been disabled in the trunk). Zotero thought about copyright issues surrounding this feature [zotero.org] and came to the right decision--not to distribute .ens files or .csl files derived from .ens files, but to retain the feature to work with user-provided .ens files (similar to the way OpenOffice.org can open and save MS Office files).

I have decided not to purchase EndNote and I am asking my employer to do the same, unless the suit is dropped. I intend to donate at least as much as an EndNote license costs to George Mason University [gmufoundation.org], the Software Freedom Law Center [softwarefreedom.org], the Electronic Frontier Foundation [eff.org] or any other applicable entity that both defends Zotero in this case and solicits donations. (I don't know any organization who has stepped in on this case yet, but I imagine that one of these organizations can provide some sort of legal support in the future.)

I encourage you to stop purchasing Thomson products too. There are plenty of reference managers [wikipedia.org] for all platforms (some proprietary, some free/open source) that you can choose instead, not the least of which is Zotero [zotero.org].

Disclaimer: I am a developer of refbase [sourceforge.net], a free and open source reference manager that might be seen to compete with Thomson Reuters's EndNoteWeb. I have and continue to use many reference managers. While I have many technical complaints about the EndNote products, they aren't the worst technical products. Thomson may be the worst socially, though--in addition to inane and baseless lawsuits, they are very slow to respond to general feedback.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

Thank you for doing your commenting this way, I hope that more story submitters will try to do the same thing in the future.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

Of course, the developer of a reference manager would be the type to take the time to adequately explain his argument, and fully annotate his sources :-)

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

Is it possible in the US to use an EULA to prevent third parties to read your proprietary formats?

Do you think the legislator should better enforce interoperability provisions?

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

Is it possible in the US to use an EULA to prevent third parties to read your proprietary formats?

Do you think the legislator should better enforce interoperability provisions?

First off EULA's are not enforceable.

Second even if they were their nature makes them useless in this case, even if the program had been reverse engineered to gain information from it the programmers doing said reverse engineering clearly are not the end user for the product, and since they can reverse engineer the program with out installing it its likely they never even saw the EULA, let alone actually agreed to it.

Thrid, and most importantly copyright law has specific exceptions for format shifting, and interoperability. Even if its massively abused to do so copyright was never intended to restrict a market.

So while I can think of laws that say this activity is allowed I can't think of any that would forbid it, I don't think their suit has a leg to stand on.

This case's only hope is the DMCA, its got some pretty ridiculous restrictions of what can be done to software, and while I don't think it applies here I am however not a lawyer.

Ok what the hell, is the captcha system context sensitive? my word was 'infringe'. Thats just spooky.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

First off EULA's are not enforceable.

Sorry; I wish this were true, but it's not. EULAs have been found firmly to be enforceable by the courts.

But enforceability of the EULA is a question that may arise in this case. And the question of enforceability of EULA may depend on which court the case is heard it. No court has made a ruling that says EULAs are generally enforceable are not.

Some courts have found that certain EULAs were enforceable in certain circumstances, others have found that certain EULAs were not enforceable, so there is still some hope that sanity may set in with the courts and the legislatures.

Additionally the laws vary from state to state; some states have passed UCITA, and EULAs are more likely to be found enforceable there.

EULAs are a matter of contract law which is a decision of the states; so it is very possible that such an agreement may be completely legal, valid and enforceable in some states, whereas other states specifically prohibit or do not give EULAs much weight in court (favoring protection of the general public's liberty instead of the corporation's privilege to restrict).

See Blizzard vs BNETD [eff.org]

At issue in this case was whether three software programmers who created the BnetD game server -- which interoperates with Blizzard video games online -- were in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and Blizzard Games' end user license agreement (EULA).

The court issued summary judgement in Blizzard's favor, on the matter of the EULA, they found it enforceable, and that the authors of BNETD had violated it.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

I was under the impression reverse engineering was not illegal. So why the reverse engineering claim as if this is a legal issue?

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

Reverse engineering may be prohibited by a license agreement even though it is not protected by the protection generally afforded to trade secrets in the US, where reverse engineering is usually permissible. With that said, though, an interesting but minor issue that popped up in one of the DVD Copy Control Association, Inc. v. Bunner cases is the burden of proof that reverse engineering has actually been carried out by the defendant. In that case, the DVDCCA not only couldn't prove that Bunner (an online distributor of DVDJon's DVDDeCSS) had reverse engineered the software - required to prove the violation of the particular software's EULA - but also couldn't definitively establish that reverse engineering had even occurred. So even if someone reverse engineered Endnote - a fact that can probably be proven by analyzing the source code of Zotero's format convertor - Thomson-Reuters will still have to prove that a Zotero author or distributor subject to the EULA did so.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

weren't there a bunch of alternative PDF readers long before Adobe made PDF an open format? and same with many disc image applications and proprietary file formats, non-Microsoft word processors and Word documents, Samba's interoperability with NetBIOS, etc.

this seems like a blatant attempt by a proprietary software vendor to lock Universities and other academic institutions into their software. even if Zotero does allow users to convert from EndNote's style format to other formats, there's nothing inherently illegal about that. if users wants to import their custom styles from EndNote to Zotero, then that's their right.

this is like suing filesystem developers because they include a copy feature in their software that allows users to potentially make illegal copies of files.

Reverse engineering

They are claiming that the defendants contracted not to reverse-engineer Endnotes and then did so, breaching the contract.

They haven't

They have:

21. On information and belief, GMU reverse engineered or decompiled the EndNote Software and proprietary .ens style files contained within the EndNote Software (emphasis mine)

While there are some style files included with EndNote, there are many user-created styles & Thomson makes MANY more styles [isiresearchsoft.com] available with no stated license and third parties (individual EndNote users) have created many more over the years. EndNote cannot claim a EULA on a file format (especially one that many people and institutions have created and distributed) & nobody has shown evidence that the EULA on the software has been violated through the decompilation of EndNote (because that never happened).

The code that you link to is in beta software and does not export a stand-alone CSL file. I know of no CSL file that has ever been publicly distributed that was derived from an .ens file.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

Thomson Reuters has too many asshats.

Agreed! I dealt with them for almost a decade. I was a Bridge customer, bought by Reuters maybe 7 or 8 years ago. I also used lots of Thompson data and have colleagues who have had their companies purchased and ruined by Thompson as they so often do. I must say that a high percentage of folk I've had the pleasure to work closely with in this uber conglomerate are, in fact, asshats. Its appalling what they want to charge for data and services and their contract agreements are only second worst to Bloomberg. I've barked at their mismanagement and have actually received personal apologies from the then only Reuters senior executives. It ain't pretty.

Its not surprising this buy-the-competition-worry-about-merging-later abomination is looking for $$ now that the economy and pending regulation changes are destroying a solid chunk of the Thompson Reuters customer base. Look for them in the news again shortly.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

"There are plenty of reference managers for all platforms"

True. But I see lots of folks at my university who are addicted to EndNote's buggy "Cite While You Write" functions that provide MS-Word integration. RefWorks has an analogous "Write while you cite" function, but still lots of people have accumulated libraries in EndNote and still have a love/hate addiction to CWYW.

To make it worse, he negatives of this situation are not limited to EndNote but extend to Thomson-ISI's intent to maintain vertical lock-in. Our library provides ISI Web of Science on-line, but when you look at the licensing terms real hard it's abominable -- yes you can access these citations but don't think about really *using* them in any meaningful way (like citing them on your Web page). It's draconian.

So it feels like getting past EndNote to a more open alternative will require freeing up all elements of the stack to include citation repositories. I ask in earnest: is there an alternative vision for these? A combination of repositories, APIs and tools that would delivery a "free" citation/bib system from top to bottom?

Looks like a pretty weak case

Having read the complaint, it doesn't look like Thomson has much in the way of a case - this probably won't get very far.

They're basically relying on license language that prohibits the reverse-engineering of the program itself - but there's nothing there that prohibits reverse engineering of the file format that it uses.

Re:Looks like a pretty weak case

It should also be noted that as Reuters is claiming only breach of contract this suit will not prevent anyone not affiliated with the defendants from distributing and/or using the software. The project can continue if anyone is interested in continuing it even if GMU loses or gives up. I hope lots of people have downloaded the source.

Re:Looks like a pretty weak case

More to the point, any file created by a user is inherently the sole property of the user. The only way contract terms prohibiting reverse engineering of file formats would hold up would be if the terms explicitly prohibited giving the file to anyone who is not bound by the contract.

In the absence of such a clause, as soon as that file leaves your hands into the hands of someone who did not agree to the contract terms, any rights the company has to protect their file format cease to be relevant or enforceable (with the exception of patents).

In the presence of such a clause, you're going to have a hard time selling your application to anyone with half a brain, and such a clause would almost certainly be thrown out as unconscionable because of the unreasonable burden it would place on the user to verify the license of someone else before giving that person data that the user legitimately created and on which the user holds exclusive copyright.

Either way, file formats effectively cannot be protected from reverse engineering. As such, this company would have to somehow prove that it was impossible to reverse engineer the file format without reverse engineering the app itself. Speaking as somebody who has reverse engineered file formats before, I can say that any such statement could not possibly be made by an intelligent person without it being perjury....

So there you go. This suit is frivolous, and I hope the company has to pay a few million in restitution for pain and suffering to the victims of the suit. Such IP fraud deserves nothing less than a huge in-court bitch slap. This is precisely the sort of case that makes me opposed to every aspect of the Pro-IP act.... Yet another case of copyright abuse by a corporation to harm consumers and illegally stifle competition from smaller players.... *sigh*

Same old story

EndNote does one thing [citation management] well. The problem is that citation management isn't a difficult thing to accomplish in software. You get some information in one format, store it however you want, and then spit it out according to another format when you are done.

I am sure that EndNote is a cash cow for Thompson, but the gravy train can't last forever. Other free (Zotero) and non-free (Papers) alternatives are becoming increasingly available - and they are far better than EndNote. Suing the competition won't make that problem go away.

Re:Same old story

EndNote does one thing [citation management] well.

[citation needed]

As the head instructional tech guy at my college

I guess I'll start strongly discouraging Endnote usage by all my faculty. The library already makes Refworks available and I've been using Zotero for my class this fall and love it. Endnote is expensive and since we have a pile of individual copies of varying vintage purchased through the years it's annoying to deal with anyway.

Time to talk to the reference librarians again about scheduling some more faculty training with them...

I'd never heard of Zotero before..

probably the same as many other users. Nothing like some free advertising. I've downloaded it and will probably start using it. And yes I usually use endnote.

If you haven't already . . .

. . . remove the "[zotero.org]" /. inserts first:

svn co https://www.zotero.org/svn/extension/branches/1.0/ [zotero.org] zotero

Never know what idiotic (or corrupt) judge might grant a preliminary injunction forcing them to remove the source.

GMU Library provides both

I teach at GMU (English); the library here has links to both Zotero and Endnote (with a site license for the latter. I wonder how much that cost?).

I plan to ask the library to drop the license for Endnote; why pay them to sue us?

I encourage my research writing classes to use Zotero anyway.

Re:GMU Library provides both

Posting anonymously as I work within GMU (and don't have job protections that parent probably has).

If software is managed campus-wide, then there's no need to bother the library. As far as I've heard (e-mail on the 25th), the entire university is dropping the EndNote site license as of Nov. 16. (Obviously, the injunction could have an impact on that.)

We've been warned that EndNote is so tightly integrated with Microsoft Word and the rest of our base PC software load that there may be undesirable side effects when the license expires on November 16 -- it's too late to redo the image, so EndNote will have to stay installed but nonfunctional until the Spring image is pushed in January. I've only had a handful of students ask about using EndNote (to be fair to Zotero, I didn't even know about the software until we got notice that it would replace EndNote) and I've never come across a faculty member using it as part of a class.

I was surprised by the announcement of the switch, since Zotero is FOSS. Quite frankly, the university spends money where it doesn't need to, and cuts corners where it shouldn't, which usually results in backpedaling, costing students and taxpayers. But maybe someone at GMU has figured out that trading expensive site-licensed software for comparable free software is a better alternative than cutting student services and operating hours in light of the recent statewide budget crunch.

Can you say...

...f***ing hypocrites?

Thomson alleges that GMU's Center for History and New Media reverse engineered Endnote and that the beta version of Zotero can convert (in violation of the Endnote EULA) the proprietary style files that are used by Endnote to format citations into the open CSL file format.

Thomson Reuters has a major division that develops tax and accounting software. The important thing to know about the tax and accounting software market is that it's saturated. Every accountant who wants software has it. If you want customers, you've got two choices: either get new accountants just coming into the market (which is balanced out by accountants retiring or otherwise leaving the market), or take them from your competitors.

And how do you take customers from your competitors, you ask?

First, by making better software. Second, by making sure that your prospective new customers don't have to re-enter every bit of information. You develop conversion software. Yes, that's right. You develop software--most likely in violation of the competitor's software's EULA--that extracts the data and digests it into a format that your software can handle.

And Thomson Reuters does this on a regular basis.

I used to work for them. I did exactly that for seven years. I think they may have just opened a can of worms that they really don't want to have open.

Beware! Virginia is a UCITA state

Virginia was one of the two states that stupidly enacted the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA). Maryland was the other. Maryland made a few significant changes; Virginia changed very little.

UCITA allows nasty provisions to be inserted in EULA's and is tilted to favor the large, downstream licensor (such as Reuters). IIRC, the version of UCITA enacted in Virginia doesn't even guarantee the licensee access to a copy of the license after the licensee clicks "I Accept" and allows EULA provisions under which the licensor can post revisions to the license on a web page at any time with the licensee being bound to the revised license without any other notice.

With Virginia being a UCITA state, I wouldn't make any assumption about the strength of Reuters' case or what seems reasonable in a proper system of law. UCITA could let Reuters get away with things that would shock the conscience of anyone with a sense of fairness.

Zotero is a brilliant piece of work

Zotero is the best piece of software I've come across in a long time, and the database schema is particularly nice. I always thought that Thomposon were fools. Now on one side they're having their lunch eaten by google scholar, and on the other side by a variety of free and/or open source bibliographic managers. For any Thomposon execs reading - if you don't stop regarding the users data as your property and start opening up instead, your decline will be much faster than similar proprietary software companies.