copyright of judical decisions

At 01:06 PM 4/4/96, John Lederer <johnl[_at_]ibm.net> wrote:
>
> What about a Cd-Rom of case law from say Lawyer's Coop or West?
>
> There have been judicial decisions for over a hundred years
> denying copyright in case decisions for the strongest
> reasons of public policy.
>
> Could one extract the public decisions produced by the
> government, leaving behind the headnotes, and any other
> copyrightable material?
>
> Would that be "fair"?

Indeed - would it? NJ is dragging it's feet in getting law in the web - what if I scanned cases, court rules and pending legislation and converted into html deleting the "orginal" features.

If case books are the only source for older decisions - under Feist would there be a problem?

Anne M. Bartl, Esq.

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