Daily Archives: July 23, 2009

Read the Letter – Update: LexisNexis and Westlaw Violating Copyright?

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Yesterday, Paul blogged about the Daily Journal article: “California Courts Come Under Fire for Giving Legal Briefs to For-Profit Firms.”  There was a lot of interest in that posting — our statistics show it as our busiest day ever.  We had 634 visits by 4pm.

This story was picked up by the Volokh Conspiracy with some really interesting commentary.

There was so much interest in that topic that we followed up with attorney Ed Connor and we are now able to share with our readers, with his permission, the letter that he sent to Justice Ronald M. George and Mr. William C. Vickrey.

The text of the letter is available as a PDF here.

Buyer’s E-Morse: ‘Owning’ Digital Books

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From today’s Wall Street Journal:

The Wall Street Journal, Thursday, July 23, 2009, p. A11

CURRENTS

Buyer’s E-Morse: ‘Owning’ Digital Books

Purchasing Electronic Tomes Online Gives Readers Fewer Legal Rights to Share and Resell Than Hard-Copy Customers Enjoy

By Geoffrey A. Fowler

. . .

Sharing e-books puts libraries in a particular pickle. The Seattle Public Library has purchased 30,000 e-books and digital-audio books for its patrons to borrow. But those e-books don’t reside anywhere at the library. Instead, it has a continuing license to them provided by a company. In exchange for maintenance fees and a full purchase price for each e-book, Overdrive Inc. runs lending systems for Seattle and 9,000 other libraries.

When a patron wants to check out an e-book, Overdrive allows them to download a copy with software that causes the file to become unreadable after a due date — after which another patron can check out that “copy.”

. . .

But there are strings attached: Overdrive’s books can be read on computer screens and on Sony’s Reader device, yet aren’t compatible with Amazon’s Kindle — . . .
And should Overdrive ever go out of business — or should something happen to its centralized collection — the Seattle library’s huge e-book collection could theoretically disappear . . .

LexisNexis and Westlaw violating copyright?

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Interesting story in today’s Daily Journal:

California Courts Come Under Fire for Giving Legal Briefs to For-Profit Firms

Lawyers Challenge to State Supreme Court Practice Says Lexis, Westlaw Are Infringing on Copyright

By Amy Yarbrough and Laura Ernde
Daily Journal Staff Writers

. . .

. . . Several months ago, . . .  Irvine attorney[Ed Connor] learned the California Supreme Court had given his 143-page brief to the legal information service LexisNexis, which was making it available online for a fee. . . .

. . .

“It’s something that we just worked really hard on, and I didn’t give permission to Lexis to put it up there,” Connor said.

. . .
Last week, Connor wrote a letter to Chief Justice Ronald M. George and William Vickrey, who heads the Administrative Office of the Courts, suggesting the practice is opening the court up to legal challenges based on copyright law.

Connor said his first reaction was to file a class action lawsuit for copyright infringement against LexisNexis and Westlaw, . . .

. . .

Santa Clara University Law School professor Eric Goldman said there are legitimate legal questions about whether briefs can be copyrighted, who owns that copyright and whether the documents are free to be distributed under the Fair Use Doctrine.

. . .