Fastcase improperly used electronic files and data, Casemaker says in new copyright suit salvo
Updated: After initially telling a law blogger last month that his company did not intend to fight a declaratory judgment action filed by a competing legal publisher, Casemaker CEO David Harriman has had a change of heart.
Lawriter LLC, which does business as Casemaker, has filed an answer and counterclaim in the copyright case initiated by Fastcase Inc. While Harriman was not immediately available for a follow-up interview, blogger Robert Ambrogi said in a LawSites post on Friday, he did speak with Ambrogi on Monday, explaining that legal counsel had urged the company to respond, a new LawSites post explains.
Fastcase is seeking a declaratory judgment that a takedown demand made by Casemaker concerning a claimed copyright in Georgia state administrative regulations is invalid.
Filed last month in federal court in Atlanta, the suit says state law isn’t copyrightable. Hence, Casemaker, despite a contract with the state to publish the Georgia Administrative Rules & Regulations in electronic format, has no copyright, Fastcase contends.
However, the new filing by Casemaker alleges that Fastcase didn’ t just make use of the text of the rules and regulations, but “improperly downloaded electronic files and data” from Casemaker.
Casemaker “does not claim a copyright in the merely statutory text and numbering contained in the content of the site,” the filing says.
It points to a contract between Lawriter and the Georgia secretary of state’s office that names Casemaker as the sole authorized distributor of the Georgia Administrative Rules and Regulations in an electronic format.
“As a part of this contract, Lawriter aggregates the Georgia Rules and Regulations, encodes them in an HTML format and publishes them on a world-wide web site linked to the Georgia Secretary of State website together with other improvements and/or enhancements,” the new filing continues.
In its counterclaim, Casemaker relies on equitable theories including unjust enrichment in alleging that Fastcase is unfairly profiting from making use of Casemaker technology.
Ed Walters, who serves as chief executive officer of Fastcase, sees the suit differently, the LawSites article reports, characterizing it as an attempt by a private publisher to claim ownership of public law.
“If a publisher wants to write about the law, they can claim exclusive ownership of what they write,” Walters tells LawSites. “If they want to use the official public law to create editorial products, like West’s U.S. Code Annotated, they may of course own their derivative work. But if you want to own the underlying law itself, you’re out of luck. Hundreds of years of case law say that the people, and only the people, own the law.”
In his comments on Monday to LawSites, Harriman reiterated that the litigation is about licensing rights to the electronic-format version of the regulations and said his company makes no claim to copyright state law in and of itself.
He said Casemaker intends to upgrade the agreement for using its Georgia rules website to further clarify that the user agrees, by accessing material on the site, not to resell it without a license from from Casemaker to do so.
Related coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “Fastcase sues Casemaker for takedown demand, says Georgia administrative rules can’t be copyrighted”
ABAJournal.com: “Casemaker agrees state law isn’t copyrightable, won’t defend Fastcase suit”
Updated on March 28 to include and accord with Monday comments by Harriman to LawSites.
