I always hold my nose when I upgrade my copy of EndNote. It's a very useful tool for keeping track of reference materials and for constructing bibliographies,1 but Thomson Reuters (and the Institute of Scientific Information before them) have a stranglehold on bibliographic databases in biology -- Biological Abstracts, BIOSIS, Web of Science, and the Zoological Record among others. Sure there's always PubMed and Google Scholar, but their interfaces are less sophisticated, and PubMed's coverage isn't as complete.
What does any of this have to do with EndNote X2? Well, Thomson Reuters are also the publishers of EndNote. So when I upgrade EndNote I'm feeding a beast that is already overfed.
Now I learn, via Crooked Timber, that Thomson Reuters is suing George Mason University for $10 million.
Thomson Reuters demands $10 million and an injunction to stop George Mason University from distributing its new Web browser application, Zotero software, an open-source format that allows users to convert Reuters' EndNote Software. Reuters claims George Mason is violating its license agreement and destroying the EndNote customer base. (Courthouse News)I haven't used Zotero much yet, but it seems very nice. I can export my existing EndNote library quite easily and have all of the references I've accumulated so far available at my fingertips in Firefox. Since I now have an alternative to EndNote, I'm going to be one of those users who switches.
I'm not a lawyer, but I took a look at the license agreement, and it does include the phrase "End User may not modify, translate, decompile, reverse engineer ..., resell, or redistribute the Product, or any portion thereof..." (emphasis added). But think about this for a minute, if Thomson Reuters really believes it has a case2, why didn't it occur to Bill Gates to sue the folks who developed OpenOffice for developing a technology to read and write Microsoft Office files?
I think Zotero does represent a threat to the Thomson Reuters monopoly. But I don't think Thomson Reuters has a case. That's the great thing about capitalism. Competition produces better products. Consumers win, but companies sometimes lose.3
1I haven't used the citation linking in Word for a long time, but the export to BibTeX works very well. That's where I do much of my writing these days anyway. So that's all that really matters to me.
2As opposed to knowing that it has a lot deeper pockets than George Mason and can afford much more expensive lawyers.
3And I don't think OpenOffice has hurt Microsoft's sales very much. Thomson Reuters may lose more customers for being jerks than they ever would have lost if they'd just kept their trap shut.
I think Zotero does represent a threat to the Thomson Reuters monopoly. But I don't think Thomson Reuters has a case. That's the great thing about capitalism. Competition produces better products. Consumers win, but companies sometimes lose.3
1I haven't used the citation linking in Word for a long time, but the export to BibTeX works very well. That's where I do much of my writing these days anyway. So that's all that really matters to me.
2As opposed to knowing that it has a lot deeper pockets than George Mason and can afford much more expensive lawyers.
3And I don't think OpenOffice has hurt Microsoft's sales very much. Thomson Reuters may lose more customers for being jerks than they ever would have lost if they'd just kept their trap shut.
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