Many litigators spend hours honing to perfection the language of briefs and pleadings. Once those papers are filed in court, their authors typically assume that only professional norms—not rights created by the Copyright Act—prohibit other lawyers from copying the text. And many lawyers use Westlaw and Lexis services that allow full text searching and copying of memoranda filed in state and federal actions.
A purported class action filed against Westlaw and Lexis on Feb. 22 in the Southern District of New York (assigned to Judge Jed Rakoff) challenges those assumptions and practices. The plaintiffs in White v. West Publishing Corp. (12-CV-1340), two attorneys based in New York and Oklahoma, argue that the “unabashed wholesale copying” by Westlaw and Lexis of legal filings violates the copyrights of “the attorneys and law firms who authored them.” Seeking to represent broad classes including all attorneys and law firms in the United States who authored works included in the “searchable databases” of Westlaw or Lexis, plaintiffs demanded injunctive relief and actual and statutory damages.
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