Court Says You Can Copyright A Cease-And-Desist Letter

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Techdirt: Court Says You Can Copyright A Cease-And-Desist Letter:

Back in October, we wrote about a law firm that was claim­ing a copy­right on the cease-and-desist let­ters it sent out, and insist­ing that it was a vio­la­tion to repost them. It’s long been believed that cease-and-desist let­ters that have no new cre­ative expres­sion and are merely boil­er­plates are likely not cov­ered by copy­right. On top of that, pre­vent­ing some­one from copy­ing a cease-and-desist let­ter or post­ing it on their own web­site seems like a pretty severe First Amendment vio­la­tion. The group Public Citizen hit back against this law firm’s claims, but sur­pris­ingly, a judge has now agreed that you can copy­right cease-and-desist let­ters (thanks to Eric Goldman for email­ing over the link).

Hard to know what to make of this, exactly. On the one hand, why not allow copy­right on such let­ter? On the other hand are strong fair-use con­sid­er­a­tions such that even if some­one owns the copy­right on such a let­ter, post­ing it may still be fine. (Or does one now need to quote from it to qual­ify?) Public-policy con­sid­er­a­tions are a major com­po­nent of copy­right and fair use (despite how the law some­times appears to oper­ate), and this should be one such case. It’ll be inter­est­ing to see where this goes from here.

See my pre­vi­ous post on this: Copyright Law and Cease-and-Desist Letters.