BRIEF CONSIDERATIONS ON “PLAGIARIZING” IN SCIENTIFIC PAPERS, THE OFFICIAL TEXTS OF A LEGISLATIVE OR JUDICIAL NATURE AND THEIR OFFICIAL TRANSLATIONS

Abstract

According to the Romanian Law on copyright and neighbouring rights, official texts of a legislative or judicial nature and their official translations do not benefit from the legal copyright protection. On the other hand, the plagiarism is defined by the Romanian Law on good conduct in scientific research, technological development and innovation as being the exposition in a written work or in an oral communication, including in an electronic format, of some texts, expressions, ideas, demonstrations, data, hypothesis, theories, results or scientific methods extracted from written works, including in an electronic format, of other authors, without mentioning this thing and without referring to the original sources. 

As in the doctrine there is no convergent point of view regarding the possibility of plagiarism of the official texts of a legislative or judicial nature and their official translations, in this short article we intend to examine whether the lack of reference to the original sources could constitute or not a form of plagiarism in the current Romanian legal framework. We will argue that, de lege lata, we must distinguish between retrieving the official texts of a legislative nature, situation in which the reference to original sources is not mandatory, and retrieving extracts from jurisprudence, case in which it is necessary to mention this thing and to make reference to the original source.