A v. Ex Rel. Vanderhye v. Iparadigms, LLC
562 F.3d 630 (2009)
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Rule of Law:
The digital archiving and use of copyrighted works by a commercial plagiarism detection service is a transformative use that qualifies as fair use under 17 U.S.C. § 107, and therefore does not constitute copyright infringement.
Facts:
- iParadigms, LLC, a for-profit company, operates 'Turnitin,' an online plagiarism detection service subscribed to by high schools and colleges.
- Participating high schools, including those attended by plaintiffs K.W., E.N., and M.N., required students to submit written assignments to the Turnitin website to receive a grade.
- To use the service, students had to agree to a 'Clickwrap Agreement.'
- The schools opted to have student papers digitally archived in the Turnitin database, where they would be used for comparison against future submissions to detect plagiarism.
- Plaintiffs K.W., E.N., and M.N. submitted their papers as required but included disclaimers objecting to the archiving of their works; their papers were archived anyway.
- Plaintiff A.V. submitted his paper not for a course, but by using a password for a university course that his counsel found through an internet search.
- iParadigms stored the student works as digital code for comparison purposes only and did not read, review, or publicly distribute the expressive content of the papers.
Procedural Posture:
- Four high school students sued iParadigms, LLC in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, alleging copyright infringement.
- iParadigms filed counterclaims against plaintiff A.V., alleging violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and the Virginia Computer Crimes Act (VCCA).
- The district court granted summary judgment to iParadigms on the students' copyright infringement claim, ruling that the archiving was a 'fair use'.
- The district court also granted summary judgment to plaintiff A.V. on iParadigms' counterclaims, finding that iParadigms had failed to produce evidence of damages.
- The students, as appellants, appealed the summary judgment on their copyright claim, and iParadigms, as cross-appellant, appealed the summary judgment on its counterclaims to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
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Issue:
Does a for-profit company's digital archiving of students' copyrighted written works for the sole purpose of plagiarism detection constitute fair use under 17 U.S.C. § 107, thereby exempting it from copyright infringement liability?
Opinions:
Majority - Judge Traxler
Yes, a for-profit company's digital archiving of students' copyrighted works for the sole purpose of plagiarism detection constitutes a fair use under 17 U.S.C. § 107. The court analyzed the four statutory fair use factors and found they weighed in favor of iParadigms. First, the purpose and character of the use was highly transformative; it used the papers for a new function—plagiarism detection—which is entirely different from the original expressive purpose, and this transformative nature outweighed its commercial aspect. Second, regarding the nature of the copyrighted work, although the students' works were creative and unpublished, iParadigms' use was completely unrelated to their creative expression, so this factor was neutral. Third, while iParadigms copied the works in their entirety, this was necessary to achieve the transformative purpose, rendering this factor neutral. Finally, the use had no negative effect on the potential market for the students' works, as it did not serve as a market substitute and only suppressed the illegitimate market for plagiarized papers, a harm not protected by copyright law.
Analysis:
This decision significantly clarifies the application of the fair use doctrine to digital technologies, particularly those that use copyrighted content for functional, non-expressive purposes. It establishes that a use can be 'transformative' in function or purpose, even if the underlying work is not altered and is copied in its entirety. This precedent provides strong legal protection for services like plagiarism detectors and search engine indexes, affirming that using works to build a database for comparative analysis, rather than to supplant the original work's market, is likely to be considered fair use.
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