Oregon v. Justia [1]

On April 7, 2008, the Legislative Counsel Committee of the State of Oregon [2] sent a cease-and-desist letter [3] to Justia [4], a free online resource for judicial decisions and statutes, claiming that Justia's posting [5] of the Oregon Revised Statutes violates its copyright. The Committee is not claiming copyright in the text of the law itself. Instead, the Committee claims copyright in

the arrangement and subject-matter compilation of Oregon statutory law, the prefatory and explanatory notes, the leadlines and numbering for each statutory section, the tables, index and annotations and such other incidents as are the work product of the Committee in the compilation and publication of Oregon law.

Carl Malamud of Public.Resource.Org [6], another online source of free caselaw and statutes, has gotten involved in the dispute. Although the Committee did not send Malamud a cease-and-desist letter, he wrote [7] to the Committee on April 13, indicating that Justia had shared its letter with him and notifying it that he had disabled [8] the public's access to the Oregon Revised Statutes on his site. He followed up [9] on April 15, notifying the Committee of various technical deficiencies in the version of the statutes publicly available on the Legislative Assembly's website.

In late April, Malamud, Tim Stanley from Justia, and their attorney Karl Olson participated in a conference call with representatives of the Committe, during which they discussed the possibility of a mutually acceptable licensing solution. At this time, the Committee proposed a "public license" to Justia and Public.Resource.Org and rescinded its initial demand that Justia remove postings of the Oregon Revised Statutes by April 30. However, in subsequent letters, Malamud and Olson (on behalf of both Public.Resource.Org and Justia) rejected the proposed license as "incompatible with how public domain data is distributed" and inconsistent with their understanding of copyright law. In his letter, Olson indicated that his clients intended to post the entirety of the Oregon Revised Statutes online by June 2, 2008. (Note: Justia has not removed [5] its copies of the statutes, so this time frame appears to apply only to Public.Resource.Org.)

On May 16, 2008, Karl Olson sent another letter to the Committee, notifying it that Justia and Public.Resource.Org intended on filing a complaint for declaratory relief on or before June 2, 2008. The letter provided a link to the draft complaint [10].

On June 19, 2008, the Legislation Council Committee decided in a hearing [11] not to pursue copyright actions regarding the statutes.