Westlaw

From Freepedia

Image:Westlaw Logo.gif

Westlaw is one of two major fee-based online legal research systems, providing access to state and federal statutes, case law materials, public records, and other legal resources. Its 19,000 databases contain legal information and much more. The West Key Number System is the West master classification system of U.S. law, claimed to be "the only recognized legal taxonomy".

Westlaw is a product of Thomson West, part of the Thomson Legal & Regulatory division of The Thomson Corporation, with businesses in 21 countries across Europe, Latin america, Asia Pacific and North American. Because of the prominence of Westlaw within Thomson West's product offerings, many Thomson West customers use the name "Westlaw" to refer to the entire West organization.

In February 2005, after the ChoicePoint identity theft incidents became public, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer publicized the fact that Westlaw has a database containing a large amount of private information on practically all living Americans. Besides widely-available information such as addresses and phone numbers, Westlaw also includes Social Security numbers (SSNs), previous addresses, dates of birth, and other information lawyers use to do background checks on behalf of their clients. While there is no known case of identify theft involving Westlaw, the company responded to the controversy by announcing it had eliminated access to full SSNs for 85 percent of its clients who previously could retrieve this information, mostly lawyers and government agencies.

"Wexis"

Westlaw's chief competitor, LexisNexis, is a division of Reed Elsevier. The two companies dominate the legal information services industry in the United States, and sometimes are referred to collectively as Wexis.

In the mid 1980s, Westlaw sued LexisNexis over copyright infringement (West Pub. Co. v. Mead Data Cent., Inc. 1986). LexisNexis's "star pagination" system, a feature which allowed users of either research system to find the printed page of a case without looking to the actual book, was found to infringe West's copyrights by a Minnesota District Court. Lexis did not appeal, but instead entered into a secret agreement with West to pay them $50,000 per year. No other publisher was offerred similar terms. One should note the Lexis case took place in Minnesota, where West has a very strong relationship with the Judiciary on all levels (see http://www.startribune.com/stonline/html/westpub/).

But things have been different outside of the Minnesota Courts. Alan Sugarman, who runs HyperLaw (http://www.hyperlaw.com) sued West in the mid-1990s and won in a US District Court in New York and upheld by the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals, that West did not have copyright on the corrections it made on opinions or on the internal pagnation. It was during discovery in the Hyperlaw trial that Lexis had to only pay the nominal payment of West $50,000 per year to license the pagnation and text corrections.


In HyperLaw v. West Publishing VI (Appeal-Text), 158 F.3d 674, 48 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 1560 (2d Cir. 1998) the Court of Appeals stated

"The district court found that the elements of the West case reports for which West seeks copyright protection lack sufficient originality or creativity to be protectable--whether considered separately or together. * * * * Our decision in this case does not mean that an editor seeking to create the most accurate edition of another work never exercises creativity. As West argues, our [prior] decisions establish a low threshold of creativity, even in works involving selection from among facts. But those cases involved the exercise of judgments more evaluative and creative than West exercises in the four elements of the case reports that HyperLaw intends to copy."


In the companion decision, HyperLaw v. West Publishing V (Appeal-Citation), 158 F.3d 693; 1998 U.S. App. LEXIS 28024 (2d Cir. 1998) that same Court held

"Because the internal pagination of West's case reporters does not entail even a modicum of creativity, the volume and page numbers are not original components of West's compilations and are not themselves protected by West's compilation copyright. * * * * Because the volume and page numbers are unprotected features of West's compilation process, they may be copied without infringing West's copyright. However, West proffers an alternative argument based on the fact (which West has plausibly demonstrated) that plaintiffs have inserted or will insert all of West's volume and page numbers for certain case reporters. West's alternative argument is that even though the page numbering is not (by itself) a protectable element of West's compilation, (i) plaintiffs' star pagination to West's case reporters embeds West's arrangement of cases in plaintiffs' CD-ROM discs, thereby allowing a user to perceive West's protected arrangement through the plaintiffs' file-retrieval programs, and (ii) that under the Copyright Act's definition of "copies," 17 U.S.C. § 101, a [**14] work that allows the perception of a protectable element of a compilation through the aid of a machine amounts to a copy of the compilation. We reject this argument for two separate reasons.


In expressly controverting the 8th Circuit’s pre-Feist decisions in West Publishing Co. and Oasis, the Court stated

"The Eighth Circuit in West Publishing Co. adduces no authority for protecting pagination as a "reflection" of arrangement, and does not explain how the insertion of star pagination creates a "copy" featuring an arrangement of cases substantially similar to West's--rather than a dissimilar arrangement that simply references the location of text in West's case reporters and incidentally simplifies the task of someone who wants to reproduce West's arrangement of cases. It is true that star pagination enables users to locate (as closely as is useful) a piece of text within the West volume. But this location [**36] does not result in any proximate way from West's original arrangement of cases (or any other exercise of original creation) and may be lawfully copied."


As the federal trial judge who heard both issues commented,

"judicial opinions are a highly sought-after commodity in the legal, literary, and news markets. Hyperlaw's action in this case served the public good because West was maintaining a monopoly over the market for several thousand judicial opinions based on a tenuous copyright claim. West was not the author of an original work seeking only to prevent another from making fair use of a portion of a work it had authored. West was attempting to use the fact that it had made inconsequential modifications to judicial opinions to maintain a monopoly in the publication of those opinions. Thus, rather than invoking the Copyright Act as a shield to protect legitimate creative work, West used it as a sword to perpetuate a monopoly over important government works.

  • * * *

When David vanquished Goliath, the Israelites rewarded him by making him their King. While Hyperlaw's vanquishing of West's monopoly over judicial opinions may be far less impressive, all it asks for its efforts is that it be reimbursed for the substantial legal fees West forced it to incur in order to vindicate the public's right of access to judicial opinions. It prevailed against an adversary that did all that it could to make this litigation as expensive as possible, no doubt hoping that a small company such as Hyperlaw would not stay the course. In these circumstances, the court continues to be of the view that Hyperlaw is entitled to an award of the entirety of its attorneys' fees."

See also

External links

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