With the advent of new technologies, even remote and rural communities now have an opportunity to access a great deal of affordable, and often free, information from the U.S. government. But although citizens are expected to know and obey the law, and tax dollars are used to create and interpret the law in the courts, legal information is perhaps the most inaccessible publicly funded information. This monopoly restricts citizens ability to access the case laws that form the basis of the precedent-based U.S. legal system. Although printed copies of judges decisions are available in some public and law school libraries that are open to the public, high-priced computer services enable researchers to do legal searches and find specific cases more quickly, easily and efficiently. West Publishing , an Egan, Minnesota-based publishing company, asserts a copyright over its system of citation, which is used in most of the courts across the country.
Citation is an essential function of the U.S. judicial process.
It is the means by which lawyers, judges and other interested parties can ensure they are all working from the same page when using legal cases as precedents. It is the page numbers of its version of court decisions, and a few editorial enhancements, over which West claims its copyright. Regrettably, the assertion of ownership of some parts of the published case law together with the requirements of courts and others to cite to certain privately published versions of the case law, have, in practical effect, given one publisher substantial control over the legal information market. West s copyright assertion has been challenged in court, but its validity never resolved. Mead Data Corp., owners of the Lexis CALR system, challenged West on the issue of its copyright citation in 1987, but settled out of court, and the terms of the settlement are sealed.