Lawsuit against legal publisher raises interesting questions of ...

A case involving copyright in legal documents has been launched in Canada.

Lorne Waldman, a human rights lawyer, has been given the go-ahead by a judge in Ontario for a class action against Thomson Reuters Corp.

Documents drafted by Mr Waldman and other lawyers have been collected by Thomson Reuter from court records and are being offered to other lawyers for a fee from their online database and retrieval service known as ?Litigator.?

In his class action, Mr. Waldman alleges that Thomson Reuters infringe the copyright of the class members by making available, without permission and for a fee, copies of court documents authored by the lawyers and the law firms.

The key issue turns on whether lawyers can claim copyright protection for documents that are available on public court files. A major element of the plaintiffs? case is that Thomson Reuter are using the materials for commercial profit. The defendants maintain that their action is justified on the basis of freedom of expression and that the case would limit access to court documents if it were to succeed.

It will be interesting to see the outcome in due course, not least as it raises the question of what value society should place on the reproduction of a lawyer?s work ? a topic of interest to the ContractStore team!

You can read the case report here: http://canlii.ca/t/fq6v6

Giles is the founder and managing director of ContractStore. It was his idea to set up a company selling documents online and he has played a major part in the company's development. He is an English solicitor, with over thirty years' experience of drafting and negotiating commercial and construction contracts in the UK and overseas. He has long been convinced that there is a quicker and simpler approach to the delivery and supply of most contracts, and he is an active proponent of the use of plain English in legal documents. He specialises in the drafting of construction and engineering contracts and as well as contributing contracts to the ContractStore website, he is co-author of the JCT Constructing Excellence Contract publiushed in 2007 (and its predecessor, the Be Collaborative Contract, which is available online from ContractStore).

Source: http://blog.contractstore.com/2012/03/21/lawsuit-against-legal-publisher-raises-interesting-questions-of-copyright-for-lawyers/

rod parsley barry sanders jr nick carter sister recruiting rankings san onofre paula deen birth control recall