A Japanese scientist claims he was able to develop computer software that can electronically identify whether an academic paper featured passages that were copied and pasted from the Internet.

The name of the researcher is Kazunari Sugimitsu. He works as an engineering professor and director of the Research Center for Intellectual Property Science at Kanazawa Institute of Technology. According to Mr. Sugimitsu he applied for a patent for the computer software in February 2008 and hopes to start selling it next year.

"Students will rack their brains to write on their own if they cannot copy and paste so easily," said Mr. Sugimitsu. It is interesting to note that the developed software uses the same technology as translation programs.

Firstly the program divides the paragraphs of electronic information into clauses and words. Afterwards it looks through the Internet for identical clauses and words and then checks whether "copy" and "paste" functions have been applied. In case the software identifies identical clauses and words, it presents the URL for the teacher to check.

The researcher began working on his software in summer of 2007. The idea of developing such a program came when Mr. Sugimitsu noticed that two reports written by his students featured copied passages. After performing a search through the Internet he identified that the passages from the two papers were copied from the same blog.

He says that the computer software will benefit both professors and students. The former will become less frustrated from "copy-pasting" and the latter will learn to do their work using their accumulated knowledge.