Re: West loses major copyright decision

Alan D. Sugarman <sugarman[_at_]hyperlaw.com> wrote:
>
> I am not sure I would agree with Mr. Bing's assessment that the
> common law supports a crown copyright -- just because England is a
> common law country does not mean that the Crown Copyright qualifies
> as a common law doctrine. Indeed, it was the Crown standing outside
> the copyright law which imposed these claims -- and I would argue in
> opposition to common law.
>
> > The only European country where a government traditionally excercise
> > Crown Copyright is the UK. They have handed it down to Canada,
> > Australia, and - to some extent - the USA, where at least some state
> > government excercise such a principle. This is part of Common Law,
> > ailien to the law of Continental Europe or the Nordic countries,
> > though the exception based on the Berne convention for official
> > documents is implemented quite differently in the different
> > jurisdictions.
>
> Perhaps the English particpants on the list could provide more
> historic information. But, the US Constitution specifically rejected
> many of of the perogatives of the Crown -- knighthood being one. Nor
> would I accept that the purported claims of a few US States to
> copyright their cases and statutes is in any way related to the Crown
> Copyright, especially since most of those states making these claims
> are not amongst the original colonies. Actually these states made
> these assertions, which have been challenged by none other that West,
> I am told. But, after all, my debate was with a proponent from
> Canada, a country actually with a royalist tradition.
>
> As far as the civil law/ common law distinction, I would be
> interested to know what is the position of the civil law countries,
> in particular France and Germany, on the ability to copyright court
> opinons apart from data base protection. It is my sense that these
> governments are much more willing to exercise control over their own
> information. I am also struck from the lack of availability of the
> EEC decisions on the Internet -- are they there? I recall two years
> ago that it was somewhat difficult to obtain the Magill decision, and
> I am struck by the abstracts of opinions related to the sale of goods
> treaty on the UN site, but the curious omission of the full text
> opinions. Why is that, Mr. Bing? My point is that there is US law
> starts from a fundamentally different position on the issues of
> access to public information -- see also US FOIA laws.

In Brazil, there is no copyright protection for statutes and court decisions, outside the eventual database copilation one.That applies both to the abstract (ementa) and the full text. Probably what happens to European decisions is what also is noticed here: abstacts have much greater importance than in U.S., in part because case law is significantly less important in civil law countries. There is no such concept as the holding of a court decision, and abstracts have approximately the same use.

Denis Borges Barbosa
<denisbarbosa[_at_]bbs.unikey.com.br> Received on Tue Jun 10 1997 - 15:57:45 GMT