Plagiarism detection in software designs

Detecting plagiarism in software is a computationally complex process. At the same time it is critical, for the lack of a deterrent through detection may result in various losses. Several systems to detect plagiarism have been proposed. However, their lexically-based analysis is not powerfull enough and can be foiled with minimal efforts. To address their shortcomings, we have devised a detection framework with the following salient features: (1) designs, instead of code, are compared; (2) multi - level abstractions of the design are generated; and (3) comparison follows a stepwise process according to the abstraction levels. A comparison with existing systems shows that this strategy results in simpler algorithms and more accurate analyses.