Duplicate Content Question

I'm working on a site which will be getting all its product descriptions from a database. These descriptions are provided by the manufacturer so naturally they are already posted on numerous websites.

My question is, if I use the manufacturer's descriptions on my site (these descriptions that are already posted elsewhere), will I run into duplicate content issues?

I've heard conflicting arguments--some say Dup content is for entire pages, while others say dup content can effect blocks of text (e.g. a product description).

 

It is better if you change a piece of the content.

 

What percentage of the total text on the page is the product description? You could probably add a comment/review function and users (or you) could add a reveiw or two to help combat the issue.

 

id say its about 20%. There is a comment/review function built in, but the problem is there are something like 10,000 products so it isn't realistic for me to edit them all..

 

I am interested to hear what people think about this issue, I am in a very similar situation with many products used across a number of websites, and am worried about the duplicate content filters.
I have also submitted a sitemap to google, and am worried this might increase my risk of getting nailed for duplicate content.

 

You could also do some global search and replace on the db, replacing every instance of "very" with "extremely" etc. although I don't think it would even be worth it.