darcusblog

Sean Takats blogged awhile back about the dismissal of Thomson Reuters suit about Zotero. I had a chance to read the transcript of the hearing. As Sean wrote, the judge dismissed the Thomson Reuters complaint due to a lack of jurisdiction. What exactly does this mean? From my non-expert read, the dismissal was on a technicality: that Thomson Reuters asserted damages ($10 million/year worth) it could not demonstrate. There was never any discussion of the substance of the suit; rather, virtually the entire hearing focused on the question of how Thomson Reuters came up with the $10 million figure. Answer: a very precise 80% of a vague estimate of number of downloads from the Zotero site, multiplied by $200 (the average price of Endnote software). The judge recognized this as ridiculous, and so threw out the case.

Here’s hoping Thomson Reuters has learned a lesson here and backs off refiling.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 3rd, 2009 at 12:12 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.