Garner, Bryan A., Ed. Black's Law Dictionary . The act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or excerpts, ideas, or passages therefrom, and passing the material off as one's own creation. To use another person's ideas or expressions in your writing without acknowledging the source is to plagiarize. Gibaldi, Joseph MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers 5 th ed.
Plagiarism is theft of another person's writings or ideas.
A fact that is so generally known that a court may accept it as true without proof. Garner, Bryan A., Ed. Law Dictionary . Intellectual Property A commercially valuable product of the human intellect, in a concrete or abstract form, such as a copyrightable work, a protectable trademark, a patentable invention, or a trade secret. Garner, Bryan A., Ed.