Canadian Court Website Guidelines - Copyright and Licensing

On slaw.ca, Patrick Cormier has published a post about the copyright or licensing status of information on Canadian court websites.

This comes out of the work of the Canadian Centre for Court Technology's (CCCT) guidelines for court websites.

As Cormier writes:

"The information published on a court web site may come from a variety of authors: judges, court staff (e.g. employees of courts administration), the justice department/ministry, public servants, lawyers (e.g. if factums are available on the court web site), etc. Unless a clear copyright and licensing policy is published on the court web site, it may be difficult for users to ascertain the copyright or licensing status of the various types of information. For example, to whom does the copyright of judicial decisions belong? Can those decisions be re-used in a commercial context, or not?"

"The CCCT recommends that each court web site displays a link in its footer, or other readily accessible place, pointing to a Copyright & Licensing Information page. This page should explain to users of the web site:

• what is the copyright status of each type of information found on the site
• what is the licensing status of each type of information found on the site
• practical examples of what can be done, and not done with the information subject to copyright and licensing terms"

Earlier Library Boy posts on the topic include:

• Principles for Designing Court Websites (August 17, 2010): "The article describes some of the results of a working group of the Canadian Centre for Court Technology that has been drafting guidelines for the modernization of Canadian court web sites ..."
• More Principles for Designing Court Websites (August 25, 2010)