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In the technical world of bio-informatics, two University of Kansas computer scientists were riding high in 2009 having published three articles with an international audience. Portions of all three of their articles had been lifted from other scientists' work. The entire summarizing statement in their presentation had come from someone else's journal article.

Companies that employ graduates to write essays and complete assignments for undergraduates claim they are not undermining academic standards because cheating occurs only if the students pass off the work as their own, something they discourage. In the other hand, reduced contact hours between undergraduates and lecturers make it harder for staff to detect work that is out of line with the student's abilities or writing style.

A German professor has won a precedent-setting case to prevent European Union publishers from using university-collated compendiums of out-of-copyright materials to produce their own commercial collections of works. A ruling from the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg said that publishers could be blocked from selling these books, if they "transfer a substantial part" of the original source to their own publication.

Northern Kentucky accused five professors of fabricating data in scholarly papers, duplicating large chunks of their own work in several papers, plagiarizing, and listing as authors a number of professors at the university who did not contribute.

For many years now in China, plagiarism among professors and cheating among students have been acceptable practices in a society that has shown little awareness of intellectual property-rights protection almost anything can be copied or counterfeited if the price is right.