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. The summary judgment was unanimously affirmed by a U.S. Court of Appeals. Read more here.
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