Wexis and the Sheeps

Reader “Charlie” recently left a lengthy comment on a post from nearly two years ago in which I complained about how Lexis and Westlaw get special opportunities at law schools to get law students hooked on their services from the beginning of their legal careers. Charlie says I'm stupid and lack business experience and just plain wrong—and more! He suggests I do some research before posting “stupid statements about something you know little or nothing about.”

I guess Charlie doesn't know that I actually have done quite a bit of research into this topic. He and others like him might be interested in some of that research, such as this 1994 article from Wired magazine explaining how West essentially stole a public database and took it private—with the implicit cooperation and approval of the DOJ, of course. Some might say West has earned its preeminent position in the online legal research market; others might say West just took it.

This page links to the 2nd Circuit cases in which West attempted—unsuccessfully—to claim it owned (and could control via copyright) the page numbers on which cases and other legal materials are printed. What you don't see there are the 8th Circuit cases that said West could copyright its page numbers. See e.g. Oasis Publishing Co. v. West Publishing Co., 924 F. Supp. 918, 39 U.S.P.Q. 2D (BNA) 1271 (D. Minn., 1996). According to my research, this split between the 2nd and 8th Circuits has not really been decided because the dispute was ended by a consent decree before it could be resolved by the Supreme Court; that decree ordered West to allow competitors to license its page numbers for a stipulated fee. U.S. v. Thomson, 1997 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2790; 1997-1 Trade Cas. (CCH) P71,75.

But while I have done some research into this issue, that doesn't mean I know it all and I'm always interested in learning more or to be corrected where I've made a mistake. To that end, I figured readers like Charlie might enjoy more of my stupidity about Wexis, so here are more posts in which I mention Wexis and its antisocial effects on society and the legal profession:

• The ABA Is Broken (8/12/03)
• Procrastination (links to discussions of the topic elsewhere; 10/04/03)
• Week In Review #1 (5/24/04)
• Five Things (6/24/04)
• Wexis Data, Anyone? (2/26/05)
• Wexis the Pusher (2/28/05)

None of those posts lays out the full case against Wexis or gives much detail about what I see as a better system for electronic legal research. Perhaps I'll work that into another post sometime or post the article I wrote on the subject. Meanwhile, for critics like Charlie who would prefer to talk about how business works rather than consider how society could be improved, I say: Enjoy your life as a sheep!

(And, of course, I say that knowing full well that I'm a sheep too and it's only my illusion that I could be otherwise since, as L. is fond of saying, power is everywhere intentional and nonsubjective. Also, as I am often reminded, there is no Zion outside the matrix.)

Posted June 22, 2005 06:13 AM | law general