Fictitious entry

Fictitious or fake entries are deliberately incorrect entries in reference works such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, maps, and directories. There are more specific terms for particular kinds of fictitious entry, such as Mountweazel, trap street, paper town, phantom settlement, and nihilartikel.
Fictitious entries are included either as a humorous hoax or as a copyright trap to reveal subsequent plagiarism or copyright infringement.
Terminology.
The neologism "Mountweazel" was coined by "The New Yorker" writer Henry Alford in an article that mentioned a fictitious biographical entry placed as a copyright trap in the 1975 "New Columbia Encyclopedia". This involved the fountain designer turned photographer, Lillian Virginia Mountweazel, who died in an explosion while on assignment for "Combustibles" magazine. Allegedly, she is widely known for her photo-essays of unusual subject matter, including New York City buses, the cemeteries of Paris, and rural American mailboxes. According to the encyclopedia's editor, it is a tradition for encyclopedias to put a fake entry to trap competitors for plagiarism. The surname came to be associated with all such fictitious entries.
The term "nihilartikel", combining the Latin "nihil" ("nothing") and German "Artikel" ("article"), is sometimes used.
Copyright traps.
By including a trivial piece of false information in a larger work, it is easier to demonstrate subsequent plagiarism if the fictitious entry is copied along with other material. An admission of this motive appears in the preface to Chambers' 1964 mathematical tables: "those [errors] that are known to exist form an uncomfortable trap for any would-be plagiarist". Similarly, trap streets may be included in a map, or invented phone numbers in a telephone directory.
Fictitious entries may be used to demonstrate copying, but to prove legal infringement, the material must also be shown to be eligible for copyright (see "Feist v. Rural", Fred Worth lawsuit or "Nester's Map & Guide Corp. v. Hagstrom Map Co.", 796 F.Supp. 729, E.D.N.Y., 1992.)
Official sources.
Most listings of the members of the German parliament feature the fictitious politician Jakob Maria Mierscheid, allegedly a member of the parliament since 1979. Among other activities he is reported to have contributed to a major symposium on the equally fictitious stone louse in Frankfurt.
Reference works.
Fictitious entries in reference publications often occur in an attempt to catch plagiarism, such as:
Maps.
Fictitious entries on maps may be called phantom settlements, trap streets, paper towns, cartographer's follies, or other names. They are intended to help reveal copyright infringements.
They are not to be confused with paper streets, which are streets which are designed to be built but as of the printing of the map do not yet exist.
Other copyright infringement.
Other examples of copyright infringement that do not fall under the above categories include:
Scrutiny checks.
Some publications such as those published by Harvard biologist John Bohannon are used to detect lack of academic scrutiny, editorial oversight, fraud or data dredging on the part of authors or their publishers. Trap publications may be used by publishers to immediately reject articles citing them, or by academics to detect journals of ill repute (those that would publish them or works citing them).
Humorous hoaxes.
Reference publications.
Fictitious entries often occur in reference publications as a prank, or practical joke, in an attempt to be humorous, such as:
Practical jokes.
Fictitious entries occasionally feature in other publications in an attempt to be humorous, such as:
Puzzles and games.
Many publications have included false items and then challenged readers to identify them, including:
Fictitious entries in fiction.
Fictitious entries are sometimes plot points in fiction, including:
Legal action.
Fictitious entries may be used to demonstrate copying, but to prove legal infringement, the material must also be shown to be eligible for copyright. However, due to the "Feist v. Rural", Fred Worth lawsuit where the Supreme Court ruled that "information alone without a minimum of original creativity cannot be protected by copyright", there are very few cases where copyright has been proven and many are dismissed.
Simple errors.
Often there will be errors in maps, dictionaries, and other publications, that are not deliberate and thus are not fictitious entries. For example, within dictionaries there are such mistakes known as ghost words, "words which have no real existence [...] being mere coinages due to the blunders of printers or scribes, or to the perfervid imaginations of ignorant or blundering editors."