Ride the Lightning

Fastcase Sues Casemaker Asserting That Public Law is Not Copyrightable

February 8, 2016

It is rare for John and I to choose the same topic for a blog post. But we both wanted to salute Fastcase – and our friend Ed Walters – for having the courage to file suit in the U.S. District Court in Atlanta on February 3rd after Casemaker served it a written notice in December demanding that Fastcase take down from its research collection the Georgia Administrative Rules and Regulations.

Our friend Bob Ambrogi has an extensive post on his Law Sites blog summarizing the issues and providing the text of the take-down notice. As Bob notes, Casemaker's parent company, Lawriter, has an agreement with the Georgia Secretary of State designating it as the exclusive publisher of the Georgia Rules and Regulations and giving it the right to license that content to other publishers.

Fastcase maintains that the Georgia regulations are public law published under statutory mandate and are therefore in the public domain, meaning that Casemaker cannot claim an exclusive right to their publication.

Fastcase CEO Ed Walters is quoted as saying, "The law is not copyrightable. This isn't a close call. Someone needs to stand up for the proposition that public law is in the public domain."

Well, someone did – and we are mighty proud that it was a friend of ours.

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