[Infowarrior] - Reuters suit against Zotero dismissed

[Richard Forno]

Thomson Reuters Lawsuit Against Competing Software Product Dismissed
from the reverse-engineering-allowed dept

http://techdirt.com/articles/20090605/2136345145.shtml

Last year, we wrote about the troubling lawsuit filed by Thomson  
Reuters claiming that George Mason University, the makers of an open  
bibliography software, Zotero, had violated its copyright by reverse  
engineering the file format used by Thomson Reuters' own proprietary  
bibliography software, EndNote. Zotero could open bibliographies  
created in EndNote and then resave them in an open format -- a very  
useful tool that should be perfectly legal -- but which Thomson  
Reuters claims violated its license agreement, which bars reverse  
engineering. Luckily, a judge has tossed out the lawsuit, though (as  
of right now) it's not entirely clear what the reason for the  
dismissal was (the ruling doesn't appear to be anywhere online, and  
the reports on it don't seem to have the details either). Hopefully,  
Thomson Reuters takes the hint and drops the case, but there's  
probably a half-decent chance that it will refile the suit or appeal.  
However, one hopes that the company realizes that felony interference  
with a business model isn't a crime, and reverse engineering has been  
held to be perfectly legal. Also, wouldn't it be nice if the company  
focused on competing by innovating on tools and features, rather than  
trying to sue competitors out of existence?

http://techdirt.com/articles/20090605/2136345145.shtml