Robert Ambrogi Blog
Legal research company Fastcase yesterday filed a motion asking for summary judgment in its lawsuit against rival Casemaker over copyright in Georgia state regulations.
The motion alleges that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and asks the U.S. District Court in Atlanta to enter a judgment declaring that Casemaker has no copyright in the Georgia regulations and that Fastcase is therefore not infringing any copyright by publishing those regulations on its own site.
Here are the documents that were filed yesterday:
- Motion for Summary Judgment.
- Memorandum of Law in Support of Motion for Summary Judgment.
- Plaintiff’s Statement of Undisputed Facts.
- Declaration of Edward J. Walters in Support of Motion for Summary Judgment.
- Proposed Order Granting Motion for Summary Judgment.
Fastcase filed the lawsuit in federal court in Atlanta after Casemaker served it a written notice demanding that Fastcase take down from its research collection the Georgia Administrative Rules and Regulations.
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 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.
Casemaker initially said it would not fight the lawsuit and agreed that state law should not be subject to copyright. But it subsequently filed an answer and counterclaim in which it asserted “the right to claim copyright in any copyrightable materials, electronic files, data, source code and/or anything in addition to the statutory text and numbering in the content of the site(s).”
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