Legal research companies LexisNexis and Westlaw can breathe a sigh of relief now that a judge has tossed a copyright suit against them.

Last February, two lawyer—Edward White and Kenneth Elan—sued Reed Elsevier Plc-owned LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters Corp.-owned Westlaw, claiming they unlawfully profited by selling their legal documents in their databases. White and Elan sought to represent two classes of lawyers: those who had obtained copyright registration of their works, as White had, and those such as Elan, who hadn't.

Three months later, Manhattan District Judge Jed Rakoff dismissed the proposed class of lawyers who fell into Elan's camp, saying “completing registration or pre-registration is a prerequisite to filing a claim.”