China Law Blog

I find it a little bit harsh they fire the guy if he/she is an intern. Just hope it was not a profesor!

It was probably a middle level manager who did it and the intern got axed.

Considering the flood of comments on this topic which included pleas to NOT fire the responsible person and observations that often this type of mistake results from insufficient/nonexistant training, I find CI's assurance that the responsible party no longer works with CI to be less reassuring then I am sure CI intended.

First, I don't think CI needed to give CLB an apology. Second, if they, for whatever reason, do so, one would think they'd do their homework and read through the comments and learn that firing the intern is not a long term effective solution.

What do you think the chances are of this happening again? As early as next month?

Although such words as frank and sincere were used to describe its apology, the CI doesn't seem to recognize its mistake to its full extent. In addition to using without permission, there was also the layer of giving no credit. Two different things in my eyes.

I think (correct me if I am wrong) the problem here is not that they are using the material, rather that they are using the material without credits.

I don't know how important was the material to the website but if it were me, instead of reacting by taking out the said material, I would have asked for authorization to use said material with proper credits along with my apology letter.

We don't know the situation surrounding the firing of the staff. It could be that CI had clear instructions during training regarding online copyright and quoting etiquette and said staff made the error by negligence. Under this circumstance, I would say it's fully acceptable to fire said staff. 'Acceptable' doesn't mean I prefer or even encourage such action though. In general I believe people should be given a chance to learn from mistake.

@Dan: Cool stuff!

@Chris: Really? I could use a job... can I say it was me?

@Serwat: It'll be much sooner than that, I'm sure. As Charlie's often mentioning - just ask Sports Illustrated.

Oh, I also find it troubling that some commentator s think a fresh-out-of-school or still-at-school intern deserves forgiveness and tolerance for his/her IP infringement. Why? Is IP a non-issue at school and the students are supposed to unaware of it? Or does the prevalence of cut-and-paste academic papers equate to a new norm that "citing" whole paragraphs without quotation marks is not wrong?

"The person who was primarily responsible for mistakenly using your articles is no longer working with us."

This statement does not necessarily imply that the reason the person is no longer working for them is because of this particular issue. If the articles were put up several months ago, it is quite possible that the involved party was either terminated or quit on their own for an entirely different reason.

Good point Handan...as somebody who has to deal with plagiarism--intentional and otherwise--on a quarterly basis, I'm not sure IP violations come with minimum age requirements.

Okay, I wasn't saying the junior, if he/she is one, should take up the management's share of blame, merely that his/her own fair share of blame should be fully recognized.

Now if the IP violation was done intentionally, with a good awareness of IPR, hmm, it's an integrity problem and can hardly be done away by training. If the whole thing was an innocent blunder, I don't see a single way of retaining this kind of innocence to the later years of collage life in a city like Beijing.

Call me paranoid, but my sixth sense tells me the CI's apology is not backed up by a sincere long term commitment to proper IP management, it's more an astute reponse to the obvious anger of an influential community, who, as they are clever enough to see, has the power to get them into bigger trouble short of a sincere-sounding apology. Thus the extra mile taken on sending an additional apology to CLB.

Okay, I wasn't saying the junior, if he/she is one, should take up the management's share of blame, merely that his/her own fair share of blame should be fully recognized.

Now if the IP violation was done intentionally, with a good awareness of IPR, hmm, it's an integrity problem and can hardly be done away by training. If the whole thing was an innocent blunder, I don't see a single way of retaining this kind of innocence to the later years of collage life in a city like Beijing.

Call me paranoid, but my sixth sense tells me the CI's apology is not backed up by a sincere long term commitment to proper IP management, it's more an astute reponse to the obvious anger of an influential community, who, as they are clever enough to see, has the power to get them into bigger trouble short of a sincere-sounding apology. Thus the extra mile taken on sending an additional apology to CLB.

Good comments, everyone. Ben makes a very good point and that is that we really do not have any evidence anyone got fired over this.

Ben, dump the anthropology stuff and go to law school.