White, et al. v. West Publishing Corporation, et al. [1]

On February 22, 2012, two attorneys and an associated law firm filed a class-action lawsuit against legal database companies West Publishing (proprietor of Westlaw) and Reed Elsevier (proprietor of LexisNexis). The plaintiffs allege that by including legal filings—such as motions, briefs, and memoranda—in their databases, the defendants are engaging in copyright infringement.

The complaint [2] alleges that Westlaw and LexisNexis engage in "unabashed wholesale copying" of attorneys' copyrighted works, and also violate attorneys' distribution and derivative-work rights by maintaining the databases. Plaintiffs also allege that defendants' conduct does not "fall within any of the statutory exceptions to copyright infringement."

The complaint also argues that the case is properly handled as a class-action. Named plaintiff Edward White represents the subclass of attorneys who have registered copyrights in their legal documents; copies [3] of White's [4] copyright [5] registrations [6] are attached to the complaint. The other named plaintiff, Kenneth Elan, represents attorneys who have not registered their copyrights. The complaint alleges that between the two, the named plaintiffs adequately represent the class, defined as "all attorneys and law firms . . . authorized to practice law in the United States . . . that authored works . . . contained in the Defendants' searchable databases." The plaintiffs do not purport to represent any employees of any level of any government, nor do they represent the defendants' own companies and employees.

The complaint requests declaratory judgments of the defendants' copyright infringement, permanent injunctions, actual damages for all attorneys in the class, and, for attorneys that have registered their copyrights, statutory damages and disgorgement of defendants' profits.