Legal Writing

Law Firms Violating Copyrights

Consider this statement about copyright:

A copyright provides the author of an original work the rights to prohibit others from reproducing (copying), adapting (making a derivative work), distributing, performing, and displaying the work.

That?s quite a stretch (suggesting people need to get permission from a composer before they sing his song) and not entirely accurate (the holder of the copyright has rights to the work, and they might not be the composer), but the gist of it is spot on — you can’t just take whatever someone else owns and use it as you please.

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Just last week, a popular blawg was shut down after an attorney from LexisNexis threatened its publisher with legal action. I haven’t had a chance to interview the blawg’s publisher just yet, but if you want some detail now, check this post at Robert Ambrogi’s LawSites blawg.

That post got me to thinking (once again) about the way so many law firms use copyrighted material (especially news stories) without permission.

Take a minute to compare this post to this post to this post. Notice any similarities? That’s right — they’re all based on this story.

That sort of thing happens a lot, and not just with small firms. Some great big law firms do it too — even firms that specialize in IP and advertise their enthusiasm for finding and prosecuting those who violate their clients’ copyrights do it!

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I suppose it just might bite one of them one day, and I suppose it’s very likely to be the firm of Hayman & Kirshenbaum, a firm that republishes entire news articles (some owned by such familiar names as USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, and Knight Ridder) verbatim.

When that happens, lawyers will be scrambling to review their web sites (which they never, ever do, I can assure you). They’ll write volumes of alerts and such advising clients that using what belongs to others for promotional purposes requires permission. Otherwise, it’s illegal.

Who knows? One of these days, the AP might just say it’s had enough and set about making an examle of someone. And what could make a better example than some great big law firm with a large IP practice?

Full post as published by Set in Style on June 02, 2010 (boomark / email).