I don’t post about recent cases I find interesting because most of you probably won’t find them any more interesting than a plate of okra. But this case is interesting. I promise.

Some high school kids (the nerds) are suing a company called Turnitin that archives student papers in a database and compares them against recently submitted papers to check for plagiarism. The idea is to keep kids from cheating off of other kids’ work. While this is a worthy cause, Turnitin apparently archived some papers without the authors’ consent. Viola – copyright infringement. They are profiting off of the nerds and the nerds are suing for $150,000 per infringed paper for a total of $900,000.

It pays to be a nerd.

Story via Patry.

addendum: in response to a comment i got in the hall today, if this happens to get the nerds laid, more power to them.