Mike O’Donnell, chief executive officer of iCopyright, gave Journalism.co.uk a sneak preview and an introduction to its new Discovery tool at the SIIA Global Information Industry Summit yesterday.

The tool scans public sites, including blogs, for reuse of a publisher’s content. The publisher can specify the search terms, e.g. how much of a match, how important the offending site is in terms of ad revenue, and how the application will contact and deal with the infringer.

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A tool from iCopyright, which already handles copyright licensing for the Associated Press, is also being developed for bloggers and smaller, independent publishers, O’Donnell said.