RE: Reed Elsevier Law suit.

[Ivy Lee Anderson <ivy_anderson@harvard.edu>]

At 02:33 PM 2/28/00 -0500, you wrote:

>it would certainly be interesting to know exactly who or what is suing
them. Anybody know--who can tell us? 
>Chuck Hamaker

I believe the lawsuit referred to is one brought by Jurisline
<http://www.jurisline.com/>, an advertising-supported website that makes
court opinions freely-available.  Jurisline extracted public domain
information from Lexis-Nexis CD-ROMs and made it available through its
website, then sued L-N (presumably after being instructed by L-N to
desist) on the premise that public domain material isn't subject to
copyright protection and therefore cannot be restricted by license.  The
case smells rather like Pro-CD vs. Zeidenberg to me, and I suspect its
outcome will ultimately help the database protectionists.

A summary can be found at 
<http://www.lawnewsnetwork.com/practice/iplaw/news/A15514-2000Feb7.html>

Ivy Anderson
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