iThenticate Blog

A recent article in the Ottawa Citizen highlighted the strange case of Veldon Coburn, a PhD candidate who is also an analyst at Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada in Gatineau.

The Nigerian High Court this week set a date to hear plagiarism charges levied against Lamido Sanusi, Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. The charges are being brought forward by a Nigerian lecturer in the United States, Professor Victor Dike of the School of Engineering and Technology at the National University of Sacramento in California. Dike, the founder of California’s Centre for Social Justice and Human Development, claims that Sanusi plagiarized his material in lectures on two different occasions.

The recent copyright suit brought against startup Boundless Learning by three major textbook publishers, Pearson, Cengage, and Macmillan Higher Ed serves as occasion, yet again, to revisit key themes that surface each time the narrative of education’s disruption by technology – especially via web-based innovations – is rehearsed.  The suit came shortly after the announcement of an $8 million investment in Boundless, led by VC-firm, Venrock.  Intriguingly, the suit also appears to attack the investors as well, underscoring the business opportunity (and loss thereof) that seems to obtain with any discussion that involves the Internet, new technology, and “disruption.”  The second theme that we see is the well-worn “David vs. Goliath” story, and the last is the same story of education’s revolution at the hands of a web-based alternative.

One of the biggest plagiarism law suits of the decade continues to make headlines in the UK and internationally. Billionaire ‘Harry Potter’ author J.K. Rowling and her publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC face an ongoing law suit coming from the estate of a now-deceased fantasy writer.  

A recent article from Times Higher Education discusses a new ‘Tariff’ that academics in the UK are proposing that will lay out a universal system of penalties for university students that plagiarize.  

International law firm Ropes and Gray is currently facing a $82.5 million plagiarism law suit, filed by their former client Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.