Plagiarism and Copyright Infringement

Robert C. Godbey

Plagiarism is tricky to define, but it is generally thought to be passing off the words or ideas of another as your own. In other words, it is using the original ideas or words of someone else without acknowledging the source. Plagiarism is an ethical wrong and particularly disliked in academia and journalism, among other fields.

Copyright infringement is a legal offense, subject to civil and even criminal penalties. It can also be tricky to define, but generally includes the unauthorized copying of a protected work. Copyright is said to protect the expression of an idea, but not the idea itself. Also, the law recognizes the doctrine of fair use - it is fair use of a copyrighted work to use limited portions for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship or research. Normally you would attribute the source of the work, but that is not a requirement for fair use.

So, if you copy the ideas of another without attribution, in your own words, that is plagiarism, but it is not copyright infringement. If you see a beautifully written sentence and steal it, without attribution, that is plagiarism, but if it is a short enough portion of the protected work, it may well be fair use in the copyright sense. If you copy without attribution material published before 1924, or by the U.S. government, or otherwise in the public domain, that is plagiarism, but not copyright infringement.

This can work the other way, too. If you copy a lengthy section of a protected work, and carefully attribute it to the proper author, that is not plagiarism. But if it is too extensive to be considered fair use, it may still be copyright infringement. The concepts are quite different, although often confused.

Bob Godbey is a partner in the Honolulu law firm of Godbey Griffiths Reiss. A graduate of the Harvard Law School, he has degrees in electrical engineering and math. He welcomes comments through www.LawHI.com.