One Opinion on the Lexicon Decision

It’s a fair bet that Steven Jan Vander Ark was not such a great crafter of term papers back in grade school.

We all remember the drill: A paper of X pages in length is assigned, on. let’s say, the French Revolution or the Peloponnesian Wars. All decamp to library shelves to find the Encyclopedia Britannica, whereupon some students cut and paste passages in bulk without a tweak, while others practice a more punctuated and selective form of copying.

Vander Ark is not such a great term-paper writer, according to a 75-page decision issued on Monday afternoon by Judge David Patterson of the Federal District Court in Manhattan. Column from Portfolio by Karen Donovan.