The "Mixed Message" award for today goes to Thomson Reuters, the company that brings us, among other things, the EndNote bibliographic/citation management software. Information Today is reporting that the latest update to EndNote, coming this June, features "Cite While You Write" technology that formats citations automatically is fully compatible with OpenOffice.org's Writer component.

This is definitely welcome news for those who use EndNote and OpenOffice. It is a heartening sign that the open source office suite is a heavyweight, a real competitor in the market. It's great to see Thomson Reuters working to make EndNote work with the applications its audience desires.

It's also at least a little bit jarring when Zotero, an open source browser add on that can convert EndNote file formats to an open format, was served a subpoena to hand over contributor information to Thomson Reuter's lawyers.

How legally defensible are proprietary data formats? That's the question asked in this fascinating piece from Nature. The story reports on a lawsuit brought against George Mason University (GMU) by Thomson Reuters. Thomson is seeking $10 million in damages annually from GMU, according to the report, and open source software and file formats are  at the heart of the conflict.

Legal news wire service Courthouse News reported recently that Reuters was suing the Commonwealth of Virginia because George Mason University was "handing out its proprietary software." Nothing is ever that simple, is it?

George Mason University's Center for History and New Media distributes Zotero, an open source Firefox extension that helps users manage citations found on the web. It performs a similar function as Thomson Reuter's EndNote software. The lawsuit is based on the premise that Zotero's newest beta is able to convert the proprietary EndNote format to the open CSL (Citation Style Language) format. A lawsuit over a file format conversion?