Are legal documents protected by Copyright?

The Court of Venice has recently ruled on a case regarding plagiarism of the work of a lawyer. 

They ruled that when the legal works are the result of a personal, creative and original process of research and expertise of a specific sector in which the lawyer has developed his knowledge then this should be protected by copyright. The legal work must not be a functional and ordinary exposure of facts and rules. 

With regards to this particular case, a lawyer remarked that a company circulated an internal regulation that was identical to a text he redacted years before for another company.

As a consequence, the lawyer who wrote the original text sent a cease and desist letter to the company who was guilty of using the piece of work without his authorization.

The company tried to justify the occurred by explaining that another lawyer, who was a former associate of the lawyer who produced the original work, provided them with the regulation at issue. 

Even if they stopped using the regulation, the lawyer served a writ of summons on the company, claiming the damages for having not being recognized as the originator of the work.

In response to this, the company joined its legal advisor into the proceedings in order to avoid liability.

The Court’s final decision was to discharge the company from any sort of responsibility, accusing however the other lawyer of being guilty for plagiarism. The lawyer who produced the original work was therefore paid compensation damages by the former associate.

The Court of Venice seems to be up to now one of the few Italian courts which recognized the importance of copyrights in legal works such as the one in case. To conclude, this verdict has to be taken positively as it has finally acknowledged a level of creativity in the sector.

By Francesca Filipo