Conference Board of Canada Recalls Copyright Reports

by Mike Godfrey, for LawAndTax-News.com, Washington

02 June 2009

The Conference Board of Canada has recalled three reports on intellectual property rights after it admitted the research contained plagiarized text.

The Board - which accused Canada of being the "file-sharing capital of the world" earlier this month - has been forced to recall the reports after its President, Anne Golden, admitted:

"Several of the paragraphs violated our own guidelines on citations."

Questions over the content of the reports (Intellectual Property Rights in the Digital Economy; National Innovation Performance and Intellectual Property Rights: A Comparative Analysis; and Intellectual Property Rights-Creating Value and Stimulating Investment) were raised shortly after their release by Internet and E-commerce specialist, Michael Geist.

In particular, Geist branded the Board's Intellectual Property Rights in the Digital Economy report as "deceptive and plagiarized," after picking up on passages which had been lifted from a similar report by the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA).

Defending the Board, Ms Golden said:

"We'll look at the lessons from this event and try to understand why our own checklist wasn't followed. Then we'll see if we'll rewrite and reissue the report."

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