Five Questions (fwd)

These are Dorothy Molstad's (from West) "answers" to five questions I had asked. jamie

• Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 1 Nov 1994 17:23:30 -0600 From: Dorothy Molstad <dmolstad[_at_]research.westlaw.com> Subject: Five Questions

From: Dorothy Molstad
To: Jamie Love
RE: Five Questions

DT: October 31, 1994

Jamie, here are my responses as promised.

1. Does West claim a copyright to its "interior" page numbers from published judicial decisions?
   1. West doesn't publish judicial decisions. West's reports of judicial decisions, including selection, arrangement and editorial enhancements - the cumulative products of thousands of West employees and over 100 years of development, are indeed copyrighted. But West does not assert copyright over page numbers in and of themselves. All kinds of people, including West's competitors, use West's citations as a matter of course.
2. How many of the hundreds of legal publishers have received licenses to use the West "interior" page numbers? Have any non-fortune 500 firms received licenses?
   1. While the precise answer to those questions is confidential business information, I can tell you that every firm that has seriously requested and pursued a license has received one.
3. The Department of Justice has an outstanding RFP for computer assisted legal services for 15,000 DOJ employees. This RFP requires the bidders to offer a comprehensive collection of federal case law as well as case law from all 50 states. The DOJ RFP also *requires* a bluebook cite. According to Professor Virginia Wise at Harvard, no one can meet those requirements without the West "interior" page numbers. Do you agree?
   1. Jamie, you know it's not appropriate for me to publicly discuss the DOJ RFP during the decision making process. Sorry.
4. Professor Robert Berring's study of citations only considered court rules for "in-state" citations to case law, and ignores requirements for using West page numbers when citing cases from "out of state." Don't lawyers also need to cite cases from the federal court and from other states? Aren't the West page numbers required when citing case law from all 50 states and the lower federal courts?
   1. Ask Professor Berring.
5. How much money do federal and state governments pay West for law books and access to WESTLAW?
   1. Again, Jamie, that's confidential business information. But it's interesting to note that since the shut down of JURIS, DOJ has, for the last several months been using WESTLAW, LEXIS and other private sector, online legal information services -- and has reportedly saved over $1 million in legal research costs. In other words, federal and state governments are getting a bargain -- the best legal information, delivered efficiently and at a fair price.

Regards,

Dorothy   Received on Wed Nov 02 1994 - 15:16:18 GMT