At the beginning of the week, financial research firm and industry online publication The Davian Letter posted a story that compared a Morgan Stanley research note written by Jim Caron to a story published by Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge. The Davian story laid out an argument that Zero Hedge was taking data charts from Morgan Stanley research and printing them as its own. Phrases like “serial plagiarism” and “stealing of intellectual property” were thrown around. At first, it wasn’t clear if this was nothing more than a blogger war between two sites, which make their mark publishing unique market views, trying to clock the other out.
Then on Tuesday, Davian published another example that got the attention of the bank’s research team leader, who sent the post to his legal experts to determine if there was any real wrongdoing. Caron told the Greenwich Time he’d didn’t read ZeroHedge before this and had no further comment.
Today, we learned Morgan Stanley isn’t going the take the alleged research lift by online publication Zero Hedge lightly.
In a letter seen by Greenwich Time, Mitchell Bompey, executive director of legal and compliance for Morgan Stanley, writes “Morgan Stanley greatly appreciates your post by Dexter Morgan on Tuesday, January 26, 2010, exposing the plagiarism by Zero Hedge of recent Morgan Stanley research. We are reviewing that site now for possible legal action. Without your article, this abuse of our intellectual property may have gone unnoticed.”
A spokesperson for Morgan Stanley would not comment on the type of legal action the investment bank is thinking of taking against Zero Hedge. While we did hear a lengthy explanation from Zero Hedge that almost sidestepped the issues at hand, those connected with the Web site would not comment on the record, so unfortunately we can’t give you their side of the story. But we have no doubt they will publish one, on their own site, after this news comes out.
Anthony Davian, of The Davian Letter told the Greenwich Time, “We are very happy that The Davian Letter could bring this issue to light. Too many bloggers get away with plagiarizing information and maybe this will help change things.”
Zero Hedge, about which New York Magazine published in an in-depth investigation in September, has taken the financial world by storm, shedding light on practices such as the abuse of high-frequency trading, which later caught the attention of Congress. The site’s loyal following, which some call the “tin-foil-hat-crowd,” has made it an online blogging success. Zero Hedge even teamed up with Halogen Network, an online ad-agency, which predicted it could earn $25,000 a month in advertising. However, many old media journalists and traders see the folk behind Zero Hedge as nothing more than opinionated, biased-thinking Wall Streeters who are trying to influence the street for their own financial benefit.
You see, thanks to news reports, we now know that Zero Hedge founder Dan Ivandjiiski was banned from securities trading, but as for most of its other unidentifiable contributors, we have no idea who they are or what financial positions they hold.
As far what their alleged motive or agenda is in reprinting the economic views of Morgan Stanley as their own ideas, we will likely have to wait to read court documents to find out ‘the why’ behind this story. We do at least know that Morgan Stanley is thankful The Davian Letter published its exposé.
Wow….
Comment by Comfortably Smug — January 28th, 2010 @ 6:23 pm
When are people in this industry going to learn that you can’t pull that sort of stuff off in this day and age?
Comment by Airelon — January 28th, 2010 @ 6:28 pm
My Bernanke can give Zero Hedge a one-way ticket back to Bulgaria.
Busted!
very truly yours,
Mr. Terrible
Comment by Ivan the Terrible — January 28th, 2010 @ 6:30 pm
While other sites continue their little dog & pony show of low grade public access internet TV, this site known as the Daveon Letter seems to have stumbled onto a real story. When I seen this story it made be want to read their site further. They gots some damn good stuff. I will now read them everyday as well as this site here for discloseing this story. Sorry for my english as I am from Europe now living in these here UNited states.
Comment by EMINIS4LIFE — January 28th, 2010 @ 6:39 pm
[...] From the Greenwich Time’s Teri Buhl: [...]
Comment by Finance Geek » Report: Morgan Stanley Looking Into Legal Action Against Zero Hedge — January 28th, 2010 @ 7:29 pm
Nice work! Zerohedge has constantly bashed the street and to think that he was plagiarizing their work makes this a dream story.
Comment by MacIntyre — January 28th, 2010 @ 7:54 pm
Great job! Zero Hedge got too big for his britches. Talk about a hypocrite! He would be all over this story if the shoe were on the other foot and one of his so-called enemies had done what he did.
Comment by bondscoop — January 28th, 2010 @ 8:03 pm
Note to the editor. “Tin-foil-hat-crowd” is a generic web term for conspiracy theorists or privacy paranoiacs, not specific to Zero Hedge.
Comment by Zack — January 28th, 2010 @ 8:58 pm
Yeah. Zero Hedge exposes the TBTFs for what they are…..how dare they.
Comment by Hillary — January 28th, 2010 @ 9:57 pm
“Tyler Durden” is an ass clown whose well documented short positions have been boot-stomped into oblivion.
Comment by Matt — January 28th, 2010 @ 10:18 pm
Wow. So it really is too hard to see this as merely a method for allowing (few? dozens of? hundreds of?) thousands of readers the benefit of a) Morgan Stanley’s analytic acumen and more importantly b) expert economic analysis hardly reported ANYWHERE in the ‘traditional’ media sphere. ZH did NOT put their name on the piece, seeing as they don’t use names. You really ought to check out their manifesto and open letter to financial media… Think Mystery Science Theater 3000 to a certain degree as well.
Comment by Chuck — January 28th, 2010 @ 10:56 pm
A typical Wall Street move, much like getting the hapless tax payer to bail them out of their losses. Just sue your critics like GS did.
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/04/goldman-sachs-sues-blogger-goldmansachs666com/
Comment by Steve — January 28th, 2010 @ 11:24 pm
Zero Hedge is a great site that should be read by all. It sucks when sometimes the truth comes out and it is not what we want to hear. The site has taken the market by storm. That is the real story.
Comment by Tom — January 29th, 2010 @ 12:17 am
It’s no wonder that the average American has little trust in the financial community any more! I think I’ll bury my money out in the back pasture. Deep enough that even the vultures with wings can’t steal it.
Comment by Idaho — January 29th, 2010 @ 12:25 am
[...] ZeroHedge vs Morgan [...]
Comment by FT Alphaville » Further reading — January 29th, 2010 @ 3:08 am
[...] From the Greenwich Time’s Teri Buhl: [...]
Comment by Morgan Stanley May Sue Zero Hedge For Publishing Their Research As Its Own | Bailout and Financial Crisis News — January 29th, 2010 @ 4:20 am
Established media and blogs are loaded with content sourced from Wall St. con artists and crooks. All, including ZH and MS, are to be taken with a grain of salt. I guess that I’m one of the tin foil ZH readers. ZH tends to exaggerate its deductions from legitimate results. Their data tends to be screen captures from the Bloomberg terminal. ZH frequently links research reports from established Wall St. firms. No plagiarism.
MS is playing the American game of litigation. ZH doesn’t have MS’s money to throw at lawyers. This is a contrived accusation to get rid of a voice with its own biases, but different than Wall St. establishment.
Comment by John — January 29th, 2010 @ 9:04 am
Why doesn’t Davian letter contact 20th Century Fox for ZH’s use of the dipictions of “Tyler Dureden” and “Marla Singer”? Or Bloomberg for use of its graphs and charts that play a roll in many of ZH’s posts? Plagerism is wrong– agreed. The Davain Letter is just expiriencing jealousy. They are a pay service and not quite as good, have far less the readership and infinitely less entertaining or informative as ZH in my opinion.
Comment by nasad — January 29th, 2010 @ 9:12 am
Ah yes. Worried about the zero hedge agenda. How noble. Maybe you should focus more on GS, MS, JPM and others, and their collective agenda as they back up trucks to the back door of the FED and Treasury. You’re worried about a firecracker, when the Neutron Bomb is ticking just scant feet away?
Comment by gmak — January 29th, 2010 @ 9:21 am
The thing that concerns me the most is not the purported plagiarism but that we don’t know who these people are, what positions they might hold, as there are no disclosure requirements, no regulatory oversight. Say what you will about Wall St research, but analysts are not allowed to trade in the shares of the companies they cover and write about. It is prohibited for obvious reasons. Beware of bloggers and take what they say with a grain of salt, cause that’s all its worth.
Comment by LMP — January 29th, 2010 @ 11:09 am
The MS research is not worth the pulp it was printed on, and this effort is trying to say it has value. Move on MS the genie has left the building….To say someone would actually PAY for this research is assuming a lot….like, investment returns are based on the research. We all know the truth.
Being held accountable for stoking the mass distribution system via “research” is the duty of anyone who reads this stuff, lawsuits notwithstanding
Maybe once the the banks are broken up we will see the real value in their research calls.
Beware of WS research, and take everything they say with a grain of salt, ’cause thats more less than what its worth.
Comment by dax — January 29th, 2010 @ 11:53 am
What a bone headed, typical Wall Street move. Tyler is going to crawl all over MS. Beware what you wish for.
Comment by Hank Rearden — January 29th, 2010 @ 12:49 pm
If you are going to publish to a mass audience, you best learn the rules of copyright, fair use, and trademark. You can publish a small excerpt of someone else’s work, but not the entire piece without permission. There is a fine line between excerpting and stealing someone else’s content, and sometimes its a little blurry.
Everyone who covers Wall St learns has gotten nasty grams from their lawyers — I had Merrill Lynches attorney ping me because a reader had posted 6 paragraphs of a 12 paragraph research piece as a blog comment. (I deleted 3 paras and told them to go away)
If you comment/annotate/criticize work, there is a lot more leeway to excerpt it. But cutting and pasting entire research docs or posting embeddable PDFs is a major no no — that seems to be the case here.
If ZH takes down the copyrighted material and promises not to “borrow” anymore of NS’ proprietary work, this will go away . . .
Comment by Barry Ritholtz — January 29th, 2010 @ 6:01 pm
This ranks right up there with stealing $5 Trillion from unborn taxpayers to funnel to your best banker buddies, or using illegal high frequency trading platforms to front-run every trade made and steal an extra $Trillion per quarter from investors. How dare Durden allow some Morgan Stanley researcher to publish anonymously on his site. Tsk Tsk. May he rot in prison or forfeit some money to bankers for such offense.
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