LexisNexis and iParadigms teamed up to create a product called CopyGuard to help detect plagiarism and copyright infringement and protect intellectual property. At a time where people and companies are having real problems with copyright protection, this may be a suitable solution for protecting their properties.

The new product by LexisNexis enables users to verify content originality quickly and easily, searching billions of documents within minutes. LexisNexis says it has 6.1 billion searchable documents, including deep archives and four to five years of archived webpages from iParadigms.

“We have a vested interest in this growing problem because of our long-standing relationships with media companies that go back 25 years or more,” said Elizabeth Rector, senior vice president of Corporate and Federal Markets for LexisNexis. “By teaming up with the leading provider of plagiarism detection solutions, we can help our customers protect themselves against this growing threat.”

Once a document is submitted to the service, the CopyGuard solution uses advanced pattern-matching technology to identify suspect passages. It then produces a customized originality report that provides underlined excerpts of any relevant text matches and a “similarity index,” which provides the exact percentage of text originating from elsewhere. It’s an easy and simple way to perform due diligence to detect plagiarism.

The only real drawback to this system is that it only works within LexisNexis and not outside of it’s network. This may be a clue though as to how others may protect their properties in other networks though as copyright protection of intellectual properties becomes more and more an issue.

John Stith is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.