AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR TESTING AND MATERIALS et al v. PUBLIC.RESOURCE.ORG, INC.

Filing 147

AMICUS BRIEF by AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, KNOWLEGE ECOLOGY INTERNATIONAL, PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE. (znmw)

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR TESTING
AND MATERIALS d/b/a/ ASTM
INTERNATIONAL;
NATIONAL FIRE PROTECTION
ASSOCIATION, INC.; and
AMERICAN SOCIETY OF HEATING,
REFRIGERATING, AND AIR
CONDITIONING ENGINEERS,

No. 1:13-cv-1215 (TSC/DAR)

Plaintiffs/Counter-Defendants,
v.
PUBLIC.RESOURCE.ORG, INC.,
Defendant/Counter-Plaintiff.

BRIEF OF PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE, KNOWLEDGE ECOLOGY INTERNATIONAL,
AND THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION AS AMICI CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF
DEFENDANT/COUNTER-PLAINTIFF PUBLIC.RESOURCE.ORG, INC.

Charles Duan (D.C. Bar No. 1013998)
Public Knowledge
1818 N Street NW, Suite 410
Washington, DC 20036
[phone]
[e-mail]
Counsel for amici curiae

January 11, 2016

Rev. 8c93107e

TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF AUTHORITIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii
INTEREST OF AMICI CURIAE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
ARGUMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
I.

Enacted and Incorporated Laws Are Non-Expressive Works Not Entitled to Copyright
Protection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
A.
B.

II.

The Wording of Laws Cannot Be Copyrighted Because Precise Wording Is Determinative of the Law’s Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Adopting Draft Language into Law Erases the Expression/Fact Dichotomy and
Renders the Adopted Language Factual as a Statement of the Law . . . . . . . . . . 6

The Policy Preventing Copyright Protection for Law Has an Impeccable Historical Pedigree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
A.

To Be Accessible, Laws Must Be Freely and Readily Available to the Public and
Are Not Amenable to Copyright . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

B.

Access Has Always Required The Ability To Distribute, Not Just The Ability To
Read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

(i)

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES
Cases
Banks & Bros. v. West Publishing Co.,
27 F. 50 (C.C.D. Minn. 1886) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7–8
Banks v. Manchester,
128 U.S. 244 (1888) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8–10
Building Officials & Code Administration v. Code Technology, Inc.,
628 F.2d 730 (1st Cir. 1980) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
CCC Information Services, Inc. v. Maclean Hunter Market Reports, Inc.,
44 F.3d 61 (2d Cir. 1994) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Chosun International, Inc. v. Chrisha Creations, Ltd.,
413 F.3d 324 (2d Cir. 2005) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
CMM Cable Rep, Inc. v. Ocean Coast Properties, Inc.,
97 F.3d 1504 (1st Cir. 1996) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Consumer Product Safety Commission v. GTE Sylvania, Inc.,
447 U.S. 102 (1980) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co.,
499 U.S. 340 (1991) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2–3, 6–7
Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises,
471 U.S. 539 (1985) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3, 6
Nash v. Lothrop,
142 Mass. 29 (1886) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8–9
National Nonwovens, Inc. v. Consumer Products Enterprises, Inc.,
397 F. Supp. 2d 245 (D. Mass. 2005) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
New York Trust Co. v. Eisner,
256 U.S. 345 (1921) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Publications International, Ltd. v. Meredith Corp.,
88 F.3d 473 (7th Cir. 1996) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Veeck v. Southern Building Code Congress International, Inc.,
293 F.3d 791 (5th Cir. 2002) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3–6, 9–10
Wheaton v. Peters,
33 U.S. 591 (1834) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8–9

(ii)

Constitutional Provisions
U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Statutes
17 U.S.C. § 101 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
——— § 102(b) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
——— § 105 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Other Sources
Michael W. Carroll, The Movement for Open Access Law, 10 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 741
(2006) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Cong. Research Serv., Report No. 97-589, Statutory Interpretation: General Principles and
Recent Trends (2008) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3–4
George S. Grossman, Legal Research: Historical Foundations of the Electronic Age (1994) . 10
Melville B. Nimmer & David Nimmer, Nimmer on Copyright (1996) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 9
William F. Patry, Copyright Law and Practice (1994) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
L. Ray Patterson & Craig Joyce, Monopolizing the Law: The Scope of Copyright Protections
for Law Reports and Statutory Compilations, 36 UCLA L. Rev. 719 (1989) . . . . . . . . . . 9
E.C. Surrency, A History of American Law Publishing (1990) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Julia Wentz, Justice Requires Access to the Law, 36 Loy. U. Chi. L.J. 641 (2005) . . . . . . 11

(iii)

INTEREST OF AMICI CURIAE
Public Knowledge1 is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to preserving the openness
of the Internet and the public’s access to knowledge, promoting creativity through balanced intellectual property rights, and upholding and protecting the rights of consumers to use innovative
technology lawfully. Public Knowledge advocates on behalf of the public interest for a balanced
patent system, particularly with respect to new and emerging technologies.
Knowledge Ecology International (“KEI”) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that searches
for better outcomes, including new solutions, to the management of knowledge resources. KEI
undertakes and publishes research and new ideas, engages in global public interest advocacy, provides technical advice to governments, NGOs and firms, enhances transparency of policy making,
monitors actions of key actors, and provides forums for interested persons to discuss and debate
knowledge ecology topics.
The American Library Association is a nonprofit professional organization of more than 60,000
librarians dedicated to providing and improving library services and promoting the public interest
in a free and open information society.

1

This brief is being tendered with a motion for leave to file this brief. Pursuant to Local Rule
7(o)(5) and Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 29(c)(5), no counsel for a party authored this brief
in whole or in part, and no counsel or party made a monetary contribution intended to fund the
preparation or submission of the brief. No person or entity, other than amici, their members, or
their counsel, made a monetary contribution to the preparation or submission of this brief.
1

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT
The law, for all its importance, lacks the sort of creativity warranting copyright. Legal language is precise and deliberately chosen to convey highly specific information. This is doubly
true when the language is selected for a specialist or professional audience, such as in the building and electrical codes at issue in this case. The particular arrangement of words and grammar
in a code determines its effect. As such, the law cannot be ”creatively” expressed in an alternate
fashion without being fundamentally incorrect. Copyright—a system designed to protect creative
expression—has no place suppressing the circulation of something that by its very nature relies on
being duplicated precisely and in its entirety in order to fulfill its function.
Moreover, public access to the law has long been a cornerstone of American jurisprudence.
Copyright, which fundamentally serves to restrict access, directly conflicts with this principle.
Courts have long recognized this conflict and have robustly rejected the notion of “fencing off”
the law by extending copyright protection to it. This Court should follow the clear line of jurisprudential reasoning and decline to extend copyright protection to the codes at issue in this case.

ARGUMENT
I.

Enacted and Incorporated Laws Are Non-Expressive Works Not Entitled to Copyright
Protection
The Constitution empowers Congress “[t]o promote the progress of science and useful arts, by

securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings
and discoveries.” U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 8. The copyright system protects an author’s creative
expression. A work must involve a creative act in order to receive copyright protection. Feist
Publ’ns, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Serv. Co., 499 U.S. 340, 340 (1991) (“The constitutional requirement

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necessitates independent creation plus a modicum of creativity.”). When that creativity is missing—
such as in operative or factual statements—that expression is not eligible for copyright.
The codes at issue in this case are both functional (as operative language) and factual (as restatements of the law). Accordingly, they are not copyrightable, and this Court should grant Defendant
summary judgment.

A.

The Wording of Laws Cannot Be Copyrighted Because Precise Wording Is Determinative of the Law’s Implementation
The Copyright Act specifically excludes from protection “any idea, procedure, process, system,

method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described,
explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.” 17 U.S.C. § 102(b); see also Feist, 499 U.S. at
350. “[C]opyright is limited to those aspects of work—termed expression—that display the stamp
of the author’s originality.” Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enters., 471 U.S. 539, 547–
48 (1985). In other words, copyright requires “independent creation plus a modicum of creativity.”
Feist, 499 U.S. at 1285. The Copyright Act thus excludes from protection “useful articles,” defined
as “an article having an intrinsic utilitarian function that is not merely to portray the appearance of
the article or to convey information.” 17 U.S.C. § 101.
In the context of statutes, the specific wording of the law is, itself, operative. The specific
selection of words used in a statute or code directs its interpretation, both by users and by courts.
“When the meaning of specific statutory language is at issue, courts often need to consider the
meaning of particular words or phrases,” going so far as to consider grammar and punctuation.
Cong. Research Serv., Report No. 97-589, Statutory Interpretation: General Principles and Recent
Trends 5, 11 (2008) [hereinafter CRS Report]; see also Veeck v. S. Bldg. Code Cong. Int’l, Inc., 293

3

F.3d 791, 801 (5th Cir. 2002) (“Courts routinely emphasize the significance of the precise wording
of laws presented for interpretation.”). Importantly, “the specific terms of a statute override” more
general terms, even when used in the same statute. CRS Report, supra, at 10.
Alternative framings of statutory language, no matter how creative, are not, and can never be,
the law. Statutory text is not prose conjured to convey a general sense or narrative; rather, it is
“the unique, unalterable expression of the ‘idea’ that constitutes local law.” Veeck, 293 F.3d at 801
(citing Consumer Prod. Safety Comm’n v. GTE Sylvania, Inc., 447 U.S. 102, 108 (1980) (“[T]he
starting point for interpreting a statute is the language of the statute itself.”)).
Deliberately operative language is not, and has never been, subject to copyright. Courts have
consistently held purely functional works such as instructions, recipes, and other descriptions of
systems or processes to be non-copyrightable. In Publications International, Ltd. v. Meredith
Corp., for example, the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit distinguished between compiling a selection of recipes (which involves some creative choice) and the content of the individual
recipes themselves (which were merely descriptions of various procedures to make the dishes in
question). 88 F.3d 473, 480–82 (7th Cir. 1996). The Court suggested that a recipe’s copyrightability is “doubtful[,] because the content of recipes are clearly dictated by functional considerations,
and therefore ‘may be said to lack the required element of originality, even though the combination
of ingredients contained in the recipes may be original in a noncopyright sense.”’ Id. at 481 (quoting Melville B. Nimmer & David Nimmer, Nimmer on Copyright § 2.18[I] (1996)); see also CMM
Cable Rep, Inc. v. Ocean Coast Props., Inc., 97 F.3d 1504 (1st Cir. 1996) (functional language instructing listeners how to enroll in radio promotional contest was not protected by copyright); Nat’l
Nonwovens, Inc. v. Consumer Prods. Enters., Inc., 397 F. Supp. 2d 245 (D. Mass. 2005) (denying
copyright protection for instructions for boiling wool felt where instructions were functional and
4

merely described a process without accompanying creative expression); cf. Chosun Int’l, Inc. v.
Chrisha Creations, Ltd., 413 F.3d 324 (2d Cir. 2005) (design elements conceptualized as existing
independently of utilitarian function may be eligible for copyright protection).
Statutory language is, if anything, more demanding in its specificity than recipes. While a chef
may choose to measure his ingredients in metric or imperial units, the terms of art necessary to
interpreting a statute cannot be substituted with ”close enough” equivalents. They are created to
instruct and constrain, and are, by their very nature, functional works. They do not express creative
impulses or strive to elicit emotion; they are written with great deliberateness to convey the most
precise information possible. This is doubly true for building codes, which are promulgated for
the health and safety of the public. Functionality is perhaps the defining characteristic of our laws;
to remove this element would be to render laws useless (at best) and deliberately confounding (at
worst).
No creative ”re-phrasing” of the statue can accurately convey the law. Enacting a statute renders
all alternative expressions of the law invalid; “other methods of expressing the idea are foreclosed.
An individual wishing to publish the text of a law cannot develop his own, unique version and
still publish an authoritative copy.” Veeck, 293 F.3d at 416 (Little, J., dissenting) (internal citation
omitted); see also CCC Info. Servs., Inc. v. Maclean Hunter Mkt. Reports, Inc., 44 F.3d 61, 68 (2d
Cir. 1994) (“It is also well established that, in order to protect the immunity of ideas from private
ownership, when the expression is essential to the statement of the idea, the expression also will
be unprotected, so as to insure free public access to the discussion of the idea.”); Veeck, 293 F.3d
at 801 (“If an idea is susceptible to only one form of expression, the merger doctrine applies and §
102(b) excludes the expression from the Copyright Act.”).

5

Whether a model code can, as a model, be protected by copyright is a separate question. Once
a model code is enacted into law, all alternative expressions of those codes are now foreclosed as
inaccurate. There is no way to precisely express the law except through the content of the “model”
codes. Interpretation and enforcement alike rely on access to the specific wording of the relevant
statutes. This emphasis on precision is doubly relevant in the context of building and safety codes,
where word choice is so critical that it gives rise to specialty trade associations such as Plaintiffs.

B.

Adopting Draft Language into Law Erases the Expression/Fact Dichotomy and Renders
the Adopted Language Factual as a Statement of the Law
Just as copyright does not protect purely functional works, it also does not protect bare facts:

“The most fundamental axiom of copyright law is that [n]o author may copyright his ideas or the
facts he narrates.” Feist, 499 U.S. at 340 (citing Harper, 471 U.S. at 556 (internal quotations removed)). Statements are similarly ineligible for copyright when they are the only way of expressing
the idea that they embody. “If an idea is susceptible to only one form of expression, the merger
doctrine applies and § 102(b) excludes the expression from the Copyright Act.” Veeck, 293 F.3d at
801.
Once adopted, the building codes become the letter of the law. Copies of the building code
are only useful to the extent that they are reproduced verbatim; “re-interpretations” have no legal
standing. The particular phrasing is no longer separable from the meaning it embodies, and the
expression/idea distinction vanishes. Legislative adoption thus removes the adopted portions of
the work from copyright protection as creative expression, and renders them fundamentally unprotectable as facts. Much like new parents debating the name for their infant, there is a modicum of

6

creativity in the act of deciding; however, as soon as that name is entered onto the birth certificate,
it exits the realm of creativity and becomes fact in the form of the child’s name.2
Moreover, these codes remain the law whether or not Plaintiffs continue to publish them, or
develop newer model statutes. Absent fresh legislative action, the incorporated code is no longer
purely the product of a standards’ body’s labor; it is the law of the land, frozen in time. The court in
Feist emphasized that the subject matter remained true regardless of its subsequent republication.
See 499 U.S. at 340.

II.

The Policy Preventing Copyright Protection for Law Has an Impeccable Historical Pedigree
Rejection of copyright on legally operative texts such as enacted building codes is supported

by strong policy reasons, as elucidated by Defendants and supportive amici. But these are not new
policy concerns: policy favoring accessibility of laws dates back to the very founding of this nation.
Insofar as “a page of history is worth a volume of logic,” New York Trust Co. v. Eisner, 256 U.S.
345, 349 (1921), this tradition strongly supports Defendant’s position.

A.

To Be Accessible, Laws Must Be Freely and Readily Available to the Public and Are Not
Amenable to Copyright
“[I]t is a maxim of universal application that every man is presumed to know the law, and

it would seem inherent that freedom of access to the laws, or the official interpretation of those
laws, should be co-extensive with the sweep of the maxim. Knowledge is the only just condition
of obedience.” Banks & Bros. v. West Publ’g Co., 27 F. 50, 57 (C.C.D. Minn. 1886). Federal
2

To the extent that this dissolving of copyrightability raises takings issues, the potentially culpable party is the legislative body who dissolves copyrightability without providing proper compensation to the author of the adopted work—not with citizens who read and distribute the factual
content of the enacted law.

7

statutes and regulations are in the public domain and are indisputably denied copyright protection.
17 U.S.C. § 105. The 1976 Copyright Act thus statutorily reflects the understanding embodied in
Supreme Court rulings extending back to the early 19th century; public policy dictates that law
must be freely and readily available to the public. See Wheaton v. Peters, 33 U.S. 591, 593 (1834)
(holding that judicial opinions could not be copyrighted); Banks v. Manchester, 128 U.S. 244,
253 (1888) (“[T]here has always been a judicial consensus, from the time of Wheaton . . . , that no
copyright could, under the statutes passed by Congress, be secured in the products of the labor done
by judicial officers in the discharge of their judicial duties. The whole work done by the judges . . .
is free for publication to all . . . .”); see also Nash v. Lothrop, 142 Mass. 29, 35 (1886) (“[I]t needs
no argument to show that justice requires that all should have free access to opinions, and that it is
against sound public policy to prevent this, or to suppress and keep from the earliest knowledge of
the public the statutes, or the decisions and opinions of the Justices.”). In 1886, the Circuit Court
for the District of Minnesota drew a direct line between the civic necessity of free promulgation of
our laws in an accessible format to the practices of the ancient Roman republic:
The laws of Rome were written on tablets and posted, that all might read, and all were
bound to obedience. The act of that emperor who caused his enactments to be written in
small letters, on small tablets, and then posted the latter at such height that none could
read the letters, and at the same time insisted upon the rule of obedience, outraging as
it did the relations of governor and governed under his own system of government, has
never been deemed consistent with or possible under ours.
West Publ’g, 27 F. at 57. The distinction between de jure and de facto availability of the law speaks
directly to the issue at hand, particularly in light of Plaintiffs’ websites, which are poorly-designed,
difficult to navigate, and unusable with assistive software—and thus inaccessible to those users
who rely upon such software.

8

The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has extended this reasoning to municipal laws. In
Veeck, the Court specifically addressed the question of whether an organization that was the author
of building codes retained the right to exclude others from copying the model codes “after and only
to the extent to which they are adopted as ‘the law’ of various [municipal] jurisdictions.” Veeck,
293 F.3d at 794. The Court cited to Wheaton, Banks and Nash in finding that the building codes in
question could not be copyrighted. Veeck, 293 F.3d at 795–96. “Given the state law foundation of
Banks and its progeny, there is no reason to believe that state or local laws are copyrightable.” Veeck,
293 F.3d at 795–96 (citing L. Ray Patterson & Craig Joyce, Monopolizing the Law: The Scope of
Copyright Protections for Law Reports and Statutory Compilations, 36 UCLA L. Rev. 719, 751–58
(1989)); see also Melville B. Nimmer & David Nimmer, Nimmer on Copyright § 5.06[c] (1996)
(“state statutes, no less than federal statutes, are regarded as being in the public domain”); William
F. Patry, Copyright Law and Practice 351, 357 (1994).
This Court should rule similarly in the case at hand. Laws must be freely and readily accessible
to the public. Subjecting law to copyright inherently creates a disincentive against the promulgation
of the law. As Professors Patterson and Joyce have stated, “[e]ducation, livelihood, entertainment,
and even participation in the political process, all are governed in some measure by copyright.
For the most part, the effect of copyright is affirmative, for it plays a large role in making ideas
available. But the effect becomes negative when it is used to give precedence to private proprietary
rights over the civil rights of citizens.” Patterson & Joyce, supra, at 809–10.

B. Access Has Always Required The Ability To Distribute, Not Just The Ability To Read
The history of the law is a history of copying and distribution. During the colonial period, the
British crown required that colonial legislatures send all official copies of statutes to be deposited

9

in London. See George S. Grossman, Legal Research: Historical Foundations of the Electronic
Age 145 (1994). As a result, “[i]n the colonies, ascertaining the law was extremely difficult.” Id.
To overcome the difficulties of accessing the law, the early colonists thus resorted to creating
unofficial codifications of enacted laws, and indeed devised useful innovations therein, including
“a topical rearrangement of the Massachusetts statutes.” Id. at 146. Thus, “[o]wing to the difficulties of public access to the statutes, the compilation and republication of statutory law became
‘a peculiar American practice’—a practice continued after independence by most states and by the
federal government.” Id. (citing E.C. Surrency, A History of American Law Publishing 19 (1990)).
Even today, “the open access principle is part of the constitutional bedrock of due process.”
Michael W. Carroll, The Movement for Open Access Law, 10 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 741, 746
(2006) (citing Veeck, 293 F.3d 791; Banks, 128 U.S. 244; Bldg. Officials & Code Admin. v. Code
Tech., Inc., 628 F.2d 730 (1st Cir. 1980)). The ability to promulgate, copy, and make useful the
law is an essential component of modern civic participation. It remains true that “[a]ccess to primary and secondary legal materials is a necessary condition for an attorney to provide effective
representation, a client to receive such representation, a scholar or student to study the law, and
a member of the public to understand and critique the law.” Id. at 741. However, as technology
makes the law more portable and accessible to more assistive technologies, it is not simply enough
to be able to access a static copy of the law, to be read in a prescribed way, by a prescribed device.
The ability of individuals to truly access the law depends on their neighbor’s ability to copy and
distribute it in usable formats for public convenience and necessity. As one scholar notes,
Our society cannot be considered truly just if some people are not able to find and
utilize the laws that govern daily life and dealings in order to protect their interests.
For example, an individual should be able to easily discover that a creditor may not
call them after nine o’clock at night, that a utility cannot turn off gas or electricity to a

10

residential consumer in Illinois if the temperature is predicted to fall below thirty-two
degrees Fahrenheit during the following twenty-four hours, or that a landlord in the
city of Chicago is required to return a security deposit within forty-five days after the
tenant vacates the dwelling.
Julia Wentz, Justice Requires Access to the Law, 36 Loy. U. Chi. L.J. 641, 641 (2005).
For the millions of Americans with various disabilities such as blindness, the ability to locate,
search, and cite the law depends entirely on free access in multiple formats optimized for assistive
technologies. Plaintiffs have not provided such formats, and are not required to under the law.
And so, much like the colonists who relied on unofficial compilations rather than overseas official
copies out of reach, large portions of the public will depend on specialized third party services to
access the law. Copyright protection should not, and does not, stand in the way of those important
rights that inure to all members of the public.

CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, Defendant’s motion for summary judgment should be granted.

Respectfully submitted,
Dated: January 11, 2016

/s/ Charles Duan
Charles Duan (D.C. Bar No. 1013998)
Public Knowledge
1818 N Street NW, Suite 410
Washington, DC 20036
[phone]
[e-mail]
Counsel for amici curiae

11

CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE
I hereby certify that on January 11, 2016, I caused the foregoing Brief of Public Knowledge,
Knowledge Ecology International, and the American Library Association as Amici Curiae
in Support of Defendant/Counter-Plaintiff Public.Resource.Org, Inc. to be electronically filed
with the Clerk of the Court using CM/ECF, which will automatically send email notification of
such filing to all counsel of record.

Dated: January 11, 2016

/s/ Charles Duan
Charles Duan
Counsel for amici curiae

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