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

TechDirt has a follow up to a case they covered back in October where a law firm was trying to claim a copyright on the cease-and-desist letters they sent out. Public Citizen poked a number of holes in this claim and invited the lawyers to "try it." Well, unfortunately the lawyers decided to bite and what's more, they actually got a judge to buy it. The news was announced by the victorious lawyer who now claims he can sue anytime someone posts one of his cease-and-desist letters. "The copyrighting of cease-and-desist letters is an easy way for law firms to bully small companies who have committed no wrong, but who have no real recourse to fight back against an attempt to shut them up via legal threat. Until today, many companies who were being unfairly attacked by companies and law firms misusing cease-and-desist letters to prevent opinions from being stated, had a reasonable recourse to such attacks, and could draw attention to law firms that used such bullying tactics to mute any criticism."

Comments

Re:not as important as summary makes out

[xk0der]

Can I like, not open the cease-and-desist letter and tell the judge that since I didn't open the letter so that I do not violate copyright? Reason being, I too write such letters, and since I didn't opened the letter, I have the right not to "cease-and-desist"? Since I can never know what is inside the letter, and I really do not want to know, so that my creativity and originality while writing such letter is not affected (corrupted?)? .. I'm exempted, am I?

Court orders and judgments too should be copyrighted, any other judge, if he/she is not creative enough to craft his own flowery words for the judgment should be tried for copy-right violations!