The update is that CPBR has not formally (or otherwise) withdrawn its “Cease and Desist All Copyright Infringement” letter that they had sent to me via their lawyer. They also have not sought (as far as I know) injunctive relief (i.e., they apparently have not sought a judicial order to force my website hosting company to remove my page).

For those unsure of what this lack of news actually means, I’d like to provide a few more details.

First, I wanted to show people the similarity between my document and the relevant section in CPBR’s (PDF; pages 24-26, shown below in three thumbnails).  I highlighted phrases that are identical to phrases found on my site.  I’m posting these images to show that plagiarism clearly exists and, thus, to show that copyright was clearly infringed.

Second, I wanted to speak to the issue of which document was written first: mine or theirs. Copyright disputes are decided on such primacy.  I created my version in 1997 for students at Swarthmore College (as part of my Evolution course), and you can see archives of the site via the Wayback Machine. CPBR claims to have first drafted its version in 2005. So: 1997 (mine first) versus 2005 (8 years after mine). On the basis of these dates, they copied me (i.e., I couldn’t have copied their version because it wasn’t even written yet).

People have also been asking whether CPBR has offered to pay the extensive legal fees that I have accumulated (no), has apologized (no), or attracted any negative consequences for bringing a false infringement claim against me (no).  Government and private funding (summary) are all completely unaffected, and no member institutions have pulled out or even commented.

I’m also being frequently asked why CPBR brought infringement charges against me when their guide text was clearly taken from me.  I actually don’t have the slightest idea.

That’s the update, unexciting as it is.  If you are an administrator at any of the CPBR member companies or universities, I’d be grateful to be alerted if my content is included in future CPBR documents in any way, even if it’s pared down to short phrases.  If they remove my content, that’s sort of a public way of saying they are in the wrong, so it’s likely they will keep things as is.  Similarly, if you are a grant applicant and attend the annual CPBR poster session in D.C., I’d be grateful to know whether my text is distributed in the how-to sessions.

UPDATE on UPDATE: According to the site tracking software that is built into WordPress, CPBR.org has read this update.  Several times.

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http://betterific.com/innovator/colinpurrington/6067

A sample idea is shown below (I hate people who throw cigarette butts out their car windows).  Just hit the up arrow to bump a suggestions up a notch.  Thanks a lot. If you hate my idea, you can hit the down arrow.  I’ll understand.

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Anyway, chances are good that you don’t live in Swarthmore (formerly Westdale, Pennsylvania) and that you probably couldn’t care less about all this … but I’m posting this as a suggestion in case you’re in a similar situation on walks and also live in a sleepy neighborhood where people lose things. Give it a try!

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In hindsight, though, it was probably a silly question.  What is more important and understandable to attendees preparing their posters is the minimum acceptable font size, because even in posters with low word count, readability can be awful if all the figure text (for example) is set in 12pt instead of the size of the rest of the body text. If only the poster prize committee would police these limits, though.  Whenever I stumble onto a site showing prize-winning posters, committees often seem to be awarding people who have made their font smaller than everyone else, invariably the size is smaller than meeting guidelines.  It’s really puzzling.  It could be that people with high-quality content have a lot to say, and so they have to shrink font size to get it all in.  However, I just think people are somehow wired or trained to attribute small print to “authoritative, creative” and large print to “amateurish, insecure.”  Or do judges take longer to read the small text, and thus demonstrate the “disfluency” advantage that gives strange fonts an advantage in memory retention? If there is a typographer/psychologist out there with insight into this phenomenon, please fill me in.

I know it’s never going to happen, but in an ideal world judges would carry one of those fun little plastic shape templates while they review posters.  Then they could position the 3/8″ circle (or whatever) over a standard letter (“s” perhaps) to evaluate the size.  If the “s” fits without touching the edges, it’s too small and the poster cannot be entered into the prize pool.  Something like this would be really useful, because kids these days have no idea what font size means, especially when the final output is large.

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