Set in Style

At the beginning of 2007, Larry Wescott, an attorney with a strong IT background, started the Electronic Discovery Blog as a forum to discuss, in part, court rulings related to electronic discovery. Last week, he shut it down after an attorney from LexisNexis threatened legal action to stop Wescott from violating its copyrights.

Before he started the blog, Wescott asked LexisNexis for permission to post cases concerning electronic discovery. He was told he could post 10 cases in one year.

After that first year, Wescott continued posting cases: 10 a year. It’s not that he meant to take more than LexisNexis was willing to give — the time limit slipped his mind. And it must have slipped the mind of the good folks at LexisNexis because — until last week — he’d heard nothing from them at all.

All of a sudden, Wescott is contacted by attorney for LexisNexis telling him to knock it off (in very stern fashion). Wescott looks back at the original authorization and sees that he has exceeded his authority to post cases published by LexisNexis. So, he pulls the plug.

That’s especially unfortunate, as the award-winning blog was very popular with those interested in legal developments in electronic discovery.

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This got me to thinking (once again) about the way some 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.

And — via their copyright notices — they claim they own the rights to the story. That’s a far cry from fair use, is it not?

This 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 decide it’s had enough and set about making an example of someone. And what could make a better example than some great big law firm with a large IP practice?

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.

(more…)

It was just a month ago when we considered Hayman & Kirshenbaum, a small, personal injury firm in Chicago.

Now we’re prompted to revisit the firm’s Web site because of this recent article from the New York Times which claims:

Copyright infringement lawsuits directed at bloggers and other online publishers seem to be on the rise.

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What’s Changed?

H & K made some significant changes to its site since we last visited and discovered the firm was presenting previously published, copyrighted works — as if they were original.

They still do that, but they copy protect the copy. That’s right. They’ll republish an article from the New York Post, but — unlike the original — you can’t select the copy, and then paste it elsewhere.

Note: Very few Web sites protect their copy from being copied.

The consequence of protecting the copy is this — search engines can’t read it. So copy protecting a Web site is like hiding it from most everyone. That’s not a great approach to promotion.

(more…)

Hayman & Kirshenbaum are the sort who make personal injury lawyers seem no better than common crooks and scoundrels.

Why do I say such a thing? Take a look at their untitled blog, which is chock full of news reports about accidents and such.

Here’s the intro to their latest post:

It was a driver’s education course, about seven years too soon.

When I read that, I thought, “What a classy way to start a story. Either Hayman, or Kirshenbaum, or someone on their staff has an education in journalism.”

I browsed a few more of their posts, and then I turned suspicious. “This isn’t their work. Based on other things published by H & K, it just can’t be.”

Sure enough, their latest post was stolen from the NBC station in Chicago. Take a look at what NBC published and compare it to what H & K published.

It turns out that the H & K blog consists of not much more than news stories stolen from others.

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Update: on 4 January 2009, Hayman & Kirshenbaum deleted that article they lifted from NBC. However, they still have plenty of other stuff at their site that’s not theirs.