Personal Injury Plagiarists Redux
Today’s discussion is about law firms republishing news articles.
Here’s the question: is it OK for a law firm — as a part of its marketing effort — to compose a newsletter and claim all rights to it when the newsletter is composed of material copyrighted by others?
Let’s begin by looking at what’s going on over at Hayman & Kirshenbaum these days. (I first wrote about H & K (a personal injury firm) in a post titled “Personal Injury Plagiarist.” At the time, the firm was republishing news articles and taking full credit for (and claiming all rights to) articles published by the likes of NBC and The Chicago Tribune.
And it still does. Take a look at the article titled “Recall of Chenille Robes Expanded.”
NOTE: To access the article, go to the firm’s home page, select Wrongful Death in the left side bar, and then select the article under Featured Articles on Wrongful Death.
That article was published by UPI.
Ditto for all the articles at the firm’s site. All are republished news articles.
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So, does this amount to copyright infringement? Or is it fair use? Or does the firm have an agreement with UPI?
First, the firm doesn’t have an agreement with UPI; at least it doesn’t have one that UPI knows about.
Fair use? I don’t see it. The firm doesn’t comment on the news articles.
Copyright infringment? Bingo!
But wait . . . .
Compare Today’s Legal Headlines from Hayman & Kirshenbaum’s site to Today’s Legal Headlines from the site of another firm.
Notice any similarities?
Take a look at the links on the left side of both pages. They’re identical!
The reason? Both firms used the same service provider to create their Web sites, and it is that service provider that’s pilfering news articles from others.
Still, it’s the law firms that are republishing those articles.
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Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at some larger firms that produce newsletters composed of nothing more than excerpts of news articles, and we’ll consider whether that’s fair use or not.
Stay tuned!
26 October 2009 at 5:56
For another example, there is this “compliance” site that is copying articles: http://www.compliancex.com/
At least the law firms were not wrapping their ads and site around someone else’s content. (just the headlines)
27 October 2009 at 10:44
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