Reed Elsevier Amicus Brief Supporting West Copyright Claims

September 29, 1997.  

Reed Elsevier seeks to file Amicus Brief -- Motion with Brief  

Reed Elsevier has filed a motion to submit an amicus brief in HyperLaw v. West in support of West's claims to the copyright of text of court opinions. The amicus brief notes that Reed Elsevier's stock had fallen as a result of the district court's May ruling in support of HyperLaw's position. Reed Elsevier also quotes from the database protection report of the Copyright Office.  

Reed Elsevier's latest position, supporting the copyrightability of the text of court opinions is just one more illustration of the phenomena of "Wexis", the anticompetitive consortium between West and Lexis which resulted from the 1988 secret agreements between West and Mead (former owner of Lexis) which among other things permitted Lexis to continue to maintain on its database court opinions copied in wholesale fashion from West books.  

In addition, this latest action demonstrates again the naivete of the Antitrust Division and State Attorney Generals who relied upon Lexis to express the public's interests during the negotiations to approve the acquisition of West by Thomson, which helps explain why the "license" agreement was silent as to the text of the court opinons.

Finally, were Reed Elsevier to have acted in an intellectually consistent manner, one would have expected them to file an amicus brief supporting West in the seaparate appeal relating to the copyrightability of West's citations. But, they did not, because a loss by West on this issue will save Reed Elsevier millions of dollars a year in license fees to West.

The motion and brief are contained in a 990 KB PDF file on HyperLaw's Web site.

Alan

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:: Alan D. Sugarman       Federal Appeals on Disc tm CD-ROM  ::

:: President              Opinions of US Courts of Appeals   ::

::                        1993 to Date - All Circuits        :: 

:: HyperLaw, Inc.         Registered Trademark               :: 

:: P.O. Box 1176	  DO NOT SHORT CIRCUIT YOUR CLIENTS  ::

:: New York, NY 10023                                        ::

:: sugarman[_at_]hyperlaw.com   212-787-2812   212-496-4138(fax)  ::

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::              http://www.hyperlaw.com                      ::

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