If you've kept up with the publishing industry lately, you've heard of Kaavya Viswanathan. The Harvard sophomore got a $500,000 advance from publishing firm Little, Brown, and Co. for her book, "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got A Life." But her own life took a sour turn after she was accused of copying several passages of her novel either directly or indirectly from books by Megan McCafferty, Sophie Kinsella, Meg Cabot, and Salman Rushdie. It's the most high-profile accusation of plagiarism in a recent spate of scandals that have implicated a variety of figures in a variety of fields.

Last week, Raytheon CEO William Swanson endured public embarrassment and a pay cut when he was outed for copying some of the rules in his book, "Swanson's Unwritten Rules of Management," from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, humor columnist Dave Barry, and an obscure World War II-era book by W.J. King. A month ago, researchers from the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., unveiled their proof that Russian President Vladimir Putin had copied whole sections of William R. King and David I. Cleland's "Strategic Planning and Policy" in his dissertation. Three years earlier, the newspaper industry had suffered a blow when The New York Times' Jayson Blair was shown to have copied or fabricated dozens of his stories.