roundtable: Re: Court Information-$.75 minute-Mar. 29 Senate Hearing (fwd)

roundtable: Re: Court Information/$.75 minute/Mar. 29 Senate Hearing (fwd)

Re: Court Information/$.75 minute/Mar. 29 Senate Hearing (fwd)

James Love (love@Essential.ORG)
Sun, 26 Mar 1995 08:54:50 -0500 (EST) 

Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 08:54:50 -0500 (EST)
From: James Love <love@Essential.ORG>
To: Schatz Paquin <splgh@primenet.com>
Subject: Re: Court Information/$.75 minute/Mar. 29 Senate Hearing (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <199503250121.SAA02833@mailhost.primenet.com>
Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950326083956.14495H-100000@essential.essential.org>


On Fri, 24 Mar 1995, Schatz Paquin ( Michael A. Trittipo representing
West Publishing) wrote:
> 
> 2.	"West Publishing claims that no one can copy the text of court 
> opinions which it publishes because of the West `value added' 
> enhancements, such as corrections to grammar." Here, Mr. Love combines 
> two false statements with a gross misrepresentation.  First, West does 
> not publish merely the text of court opinions.  West publishes complex, 
> value-added compilations of court decisions. (See point three).  Second, 
> the "texts of court opinions," as Mr. Love well knows, are in the
> public domain and non-copyrightable. 

     As an attorney in the Law firm that represents West in all of its 
negotiations for licenses for its database and citations, I would like 
to ask a very important question.  The courts issue "slip opinions", and 
these are later "published" by West in its paper bound volumes.  The 
published opinions differ somewhat from the slip opinions.  The judges 
who write the opinions may or may not approve substantially all of the 
corrections (evidence on this point has been sealed by Judge Preska in 
the Hyperlaw/West lawsuit in the Souther District of New York).  Since 
a century of case law and scholarly research refers to the corrected 
"published" versions of the cases, is this in the public domain?  Or 
more to the point, can one of West's competitors rip the splines off 
one of West's paper volumes, and copy the corrected "text" of the 
opinions, without obtaining first a license from West?  Of course, I am 
not talking about headnotes, key indexes, or other value added features, 
but simply the text of the opinions which constitute the laws that I 
must follow.

jamie

----------------------------------------------------------------------
James Love, TAP; internet:  love@tap.org
P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036; v. 202/387-8030; f. 202/234-5176
12 Church Road, Ardmore, PA 19003; v. 610/658-0880; f. 610/649-4066

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