Online Anti-Plagiarism Service Sets Off Court Fight

As educators grapple with how best to combat plagiarism in the Internet age, several high school students are suing a company that many districts and schools have hired to help them reduce such cheating.

The lawsuit alleges that the company is violating the high school students’ rights under U.S. copyright law. The students are required by their schools to submit some essays to Turnitin.com, a Web-based service that compares the documents against a massive internal database and other sources to look for signs of plagiarism. It then places the student works in an electronic archive.

The site’s parent company, Oakland, Calif.-based iParadigms LLC, submitted a motion April 26 to dismiss the case, which was filed in the U.S. District...

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