"Students who submit papers to Turnitin retain the copyright to the work they created. A copy of submitted papers is retained in a Turnitin database archive to be compared with future submissions—a practice that helps protect and strengthen copyright ownership.
A U.S. District Court judge ruled that archiving student papers to assess originality of newly-submitted papers constitutes a fair use under the U.S. Copyright Act, provides “a substantial public benefit" and helps protect the papers from being exploited by others. Read the summary judgement.