About Plagiarism

In Roman times the author Marcus Valerius Martialis (40–102 BCE and) realized that it was bad for his business to be copied by others without being given credit.

He launched a campaign to denounce what he considered to be literary thieves. He coined the phrase plagiārius (kidnapper, someone who ensnares children or slaves in a plaga or net). Since copyright law did not exist yet, and there was also no other legal recourse open to him, he came up with a clever idea.

Being known for his acid stylus, he put his writing skills to good use. He wrote several verses aimed at copycats.

One that survived is a wonderful quip about Fidentinus, whom he perceived at being a plagiarist.

“Fame has it that you, Fidentinus, recite my books to the crowd as if none other than your own. If you’re willing that they be called mine, I’ll send you the poems for free.
If you want them to be called yours, buy this one, so that they won’t be mine.”

Nowadays, plagiarism is a criminal offense that will also ostracize an author. Some famous examples include:

• Alex Haley settled a 1977 lawsuit with Harold Courlander that cited approximately 80 passages in Haley's novel Roots (1976) as having been plagiarized from Courlander's novel The African (1967)
  

• Kaavya Viswanathan's first novel How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life is reported to contain plagiarized passages from at least five other novels. All editions of the book were subsequently withdrawn, her publishing deal with Little, Brown and Co. was rescinded, and a film deal with Dreamworks SKG was canceled.

• Paul Crouch, the televangelist founder of the Trinity Broadcasting Network, was sued in 2000 by novelist Sylvia Fleener. She claimed that Crouch's novel The Omega Code was plagiarized from her unpublished manuscript, The Omega Syndrome. Crouch and Fleener's attorneys reached an out-of-court settlement for an undisclosed sum.
  
  
• In 2007 at the age of 12, Marie-Pier Côté, a Canadian, published a novel titled Laura l'immortelle.The author later admitted that she plagiarized a Highlander fan fiction, rewrote it, and presented it as an original work.

• In December 2011, Naomi Ragen was convicted of using parts of Sarah Shapiro's 1990 book “Growing with My Children: A Jewish Mother’s Diary” in her book "Sotah," which appeared in 1992. In addition to levying damages, as well as court costs and lawyer's fees, the court ordered Ragen to remove the plagiarized passages in future printings of the book.