On 5/29/97, Andrew Martin <amartin[_at_]cancopy.com> wrote:
>
> What I find intriguing in these discussions is that no-one seems to be
> giving any thought to whether commercial publishers will continue with
> services that, effectively, can be ripped off by competitors, who have
> invested absolutely nothing. Leaving aside any desire to beat up on
> West, any your interests really advanced if the larger law publishers
> decide to abandon what are obviously, for practitioners and academics,
> key areas of publishing?
Such empirical evidence as we have indicates that the unavailability of copyright protection for the contents of particular sorts of works hasn't yet discouraged many U.S. publishers from publishing useful compilations. Consider, for example, LEXIS's database of cases and statutes; World Almanacs and other books of facts; and telephone books after *Feist*. My guess is that the copyright law doesn't loom very large, either way, for these publishers -- although it is surely a useful tool that they will use against competitors if they have it, it isn't a big factor in the size of the profit they expect to earn from their publications.
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