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west/thomson merger
At today's hearing on the Thomson/DOJ consent order, Judge Friedman
complained so much about the provision that required people who license
the page numbers to agree not to challenge the copyright in court, that
Thomson agreed to eliminate this requirement from the consent order.
The hearing didn't address many of concerns raised in the public comments
in any detail. Only Thomson, Lexis, DOJ and the State of California
(representing the other states) spoke. Lexis was focused mostly on its
complaints about the Autocite divestiture (not a true divestiture), and
failure to divest the ARL's.
The judge asked some questions about the West assertions of copyright on
the text of opinions, but did not receive a responsive answer from DOJ,
and no comment at all from Thomson on this issue. Lexis, which has a text
license, did not raise this issue.
Lexis was apparently denied discovery in the proceeding. The Judge did
not acknowledge our request to reconsider not allowing us to be an amicus.
Hyperlaw, which only received the government's filings on Thursday, had
asked that they be allowed to file their brief after the government
complied with the requirements for public notice under the Tunney Act.
jamie
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James Love / love@tap.org / P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036
Voice: 202/387-8030; Fax 202/234-5176
Center for Study of Responsive Law
Consumer Project on Technology; http://www.essential.org/cpt
Taxpayer Assets Project; http://www.tap.org
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