Blog Post on Copyright in Court Judgments

The blog of the International Association of Law Libraries has published an interesting post called Copyright in Court Judgments?

It looks at the copyright status of court judgments in a number of common law countries:

"At the High Court of Australia, we are often asked (usually by academics) about using the court’s judgments for various research purposes.  Even though these judgments are freely available on sites such as AustLII and JADE, academics often seek our permission before using them, because they believe the court holds the copyright over its judgments.  I was not sure if this was true, which caused me to research whether there is copyright in court judgments.  And if copyright applies, who holds the copyright?"

"The are no simple answers to these questions in Australia.  So, I decided to expand my research to other common law countries such the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Canada.  Below is my preliminary attempt at comparing how court judgments are treated by copyright laws in these various jurisdictions.  First though, let’s start with a bit of history."