The document discusses building a legal research toolkit using open web resources to replace premium legal research services. It recommends assembling resources from dedicated IP sites, general law sites, non-legal interdisciplinary sites, and developing an information-seeking behavior focused on IP. Key components of the toolkit include news, professional organizations, law firms, law schools, trade associations, primary and secondary legal sources, and using social media and technology. The document emphasizes that open web resources require evaluating coverage, currency, accuracy, and developing strategies to stay updated as resources change over time.

1. Building Legal Research Capacity
using the Open Web
The Day You Lose Access to Premium
Services : Toolkit Building
©2016 Jon R. Cavicchi, Professor & IP Librarian

3. Your Goal = Assemble a Toolkit to
meet your professional needs…

5. • Dedicated IP sites
– Open web
– Semi open web
• Dedicated General Law Sites
– Capture IP content
• Non-Legal Interdisciplinary Sites
– Sprectrum from pure news to high scholarship
– Capture IP content

8. Develop your own information
seeking behavior….
• Focus on IP but works with most other areas
of law
• Change is constant…tomorrow and site may
be gone
• Info social networking key
• Become a junk mail junkie

9. • Law Firms
• Corporations
• Government
• Universities
• NGO
• Solutions Providers
• Public Policy
• Consultancies

10. Topics Lawyers Researching Using Internet Services
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
generalnews(77.8%)
lawyers(72.9%)
companies(66.8%)
legalnews(65.2%)
publicrecords(62.1%)
experts(41.3%)
judges(39.9%)
casedockets(38.2%)
state
administrative(36.8%)
state
legislation(35.9%)
federal
administrative(30.6%)
otherstate
legislation(29.6%)
federal
legislation(28.8%)
otherstate
administrative(27.6%)
legalforms(25.4%)
otherstatecase
law(22.9%)
statecase
law(22.8%)
federalcase
law(15%)
legalCitators(11.3%)
Topics
<2008 Legal Technology Survey Report by ABA>
Percentage(%)
Series1
How U.S. legal professionals use the Open Web

11. Grad Program
Alum Survey

15. Lots of Premium $ervices give free
news

16. How do I choose?

17. Law Firm Positions
• Lawyer
• Technical Specialist
• IP analyst
• IP Informatics
• Paraprofessionals

18. Law Firm Areas of Practice
• Prosecution
• Litigation
• Transactional
• Business aspects

20. Anatomy of a Patent Case
Chapter 2: The Complaint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Chapter 3: Motions to Dismiss, to Transfer, to Strike . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Chapter 4: Answer and Counterclaims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Chapter 5: Preliminary Injunction Motions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Chapter 6: The Case-Management Conference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Chapter 7: Discovery Issues Unique to Patent Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Chapter 8: Claim Construction—The Markman Hearing . . . . . . . . 71
Chapter 9: Summary Judgment Motions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Chapter 10: Pretrial Issues and Motions In Limine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Chapter 11: Trial. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Chapter 12: Posttrial Proceedings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Chapter 13: The Appeal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Chapter 14: Trial of a Patent Case in Canada. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

21. For litigation example
• Primary sources of law
• Secondary sources of law
• Fact finding
• Public records including patent, TM and ©
• Knowledge management
• Continuing Searches

22. Try to create a
Lexis/Westlaw
“one stop shop”
Try to create a
Lexis/Westlaw
“one stop shop”

23. Strategies too keep up to date
• Develop portfolio of needs
• Examine your information seeking behavior
• Determines sites and tools that meet needs
• Determine options to harvest information

24. News
• IP news sites
• IP sites with news sections
• IP sites with email news delivery
• IP sites with RSS enabled pages
• Search sites with alerts
• Social Networking
– Blogs
– Listservs
– Newsgroups
– Linkedin Groups
– Twitter Following
– Facebook
– Social Bookmarking

25. What's an RSS Feed?
• RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.
• RSS feeds are a way for websites to distribute
new content as it becomes available.
• Think of an RSS feed as a file that contains a
blog or website's most recent entries.
• By subscribing to a site's feed in Reader, you
will automatically be notified when that
website contains new posts or entries.
• Instead of checking sites repeatedly for
updates, RSS feeds bring your favorite websites
to you!

26. Google Reader in Plain English

27. Feed news sources to Twitter

28. • Web pages
• Email newsletters
• Listservs
• Newsgroups
• Harvestable PDF
newsletters
• Technologies = RSS
Feeds
• Social media
– Twitter
– LinkedIn
– Facebook
– Social bookmarking
– YouTube

31. Newsgroups

33. Professional Organizations

34. Law FirmsNews
Articles
Webinars
Social tools &
content
News
Articles
Webinars
Social tools &
content

35. Law Schools
Intellectual Property
Akron, University of, LL.M.
Albany Law School, LL.M.
Boston University, LL.M.
Case Western Reserve University, LL.M.
Chicago-Kent College of Law, LL.M.
Dayton, University of, LL.M.; M.S.L.
DePaul University, LL.M.
Drake University, LL.M.; M.J.
Fordham University, LL.M.
George Mason University, LL.M.
George Washington University, LL.M.
Golden Gate University, LL.M.
Houston, University of, LL.M.
Indiana University-Indianapolis, LL.M.
John Marshall Law School (Chicago), LL.M.;
M.S.
Michigan State University College of Law
LL.M.; M.J.
New Hampshire, University of, LL.M.
San Francisco, University of, LL.M.
Santa Clara University, LL.M.
Seton Hall University, LL.M.
Thomas M. Cooley Law School, LL.M.
Washington, University of, LL.M.
Washington University, LL.M.
Yeshiva University, LL.M.

36. Solutions Providers

37. Trade Associations

38. Legal Research
Primary and Secondary Sources

42. Mandatory or Persuasive?
Example: Cases
• Determining when a court's decision is mandatory or
persuasive can be tricky, given the multiple jurisdictions
throughout the country and the layers of courts within each
jurisdiction.
• Our court systems are founded on the belief that there should
be fairness, consistency, and predictability in judicial decision
making. The doctrine that expresses this concept is labeled
stare decisis.
• In essence, stare decisis considers mandatory, or binding, an
existing decision from any court that exercises appellate
jurisdiction over another court, unless the lower court can
show that the decision is clearly wrong or is distinguishable
from the case at hand.

43. • When Decisions Are Mandatory
– Whether a decision of a particular court is mandatory, whether it must be
followed by another court, depends on the source of the decision. As a
general rule, the decisions of a court will be mandatory authority for any
court lower in the hierarchy. Decisions from a court lower than the one in
question are never mandatory.
• Federal Courts
– United States Supreme Court--The decisions of the United States Supreme
Court are mandatory authority in all courts, federal and state, when the
decisions cover points of federal law.
– United States courts of appeals--Decisions of the U.S. courts of appeals are
mandatory on district courts and other lower courts within the circuit. Court
of appeals decisions are persuasive authority in the other circuits, both for
other courts of appeals and for lower courts. Federal courts of appeals
decisions are not binding on state courts.
– United States district courts--The decisions of U.S. district courts are
mandatory on specialized lower courts if within the appellate jurisdiction of
the district court (i.e., bankruptcy, territorial courts, etc.). District court
decisions are not binding on state courts.

44. • 1. identical legal issues
• 2. substantially similar material legal facts
• 3. mandatory precedent
• But 'citation of the case in point [is] by no means the last word'.
• As Karl Llewellyn wrote, 'There is no precedent that the judge may
not at his need either file down to razor thinness or expand into a
bludgeon'.
• For example, the judge may 'explain' the case, 'limit it to its facts',
or somehow 'distinguish' it from your case. So, where you or your
client's opponent cites a governing precedent, see if you can 'file
down the case to thinness.

46. Lexis & Westlaw
• Cases
• Statutes
• Regulations
• Administrative
Decisions
• Procedural Manuals
• Legal Dictionaries
– Words & Phrases
• Legal Encyclopedias
• Annotated Law Reports
• Legal Periodicals
• Legal Treatises,
Hornbooks & Nutshells
• Restatements
• Loose Leaf Services
• Legal Directories.

47. Open Web & Secondary Sources
Proprietary sources NOT on the Open Web

48. Secondary Sources on the Web
• Public domain treatises
– Including governments and some NGO
• Pirated treatises
• Selective law reviews
• Web pages
• Newsletters
• Blogs

49. Lexis and Westlaw LITE

50. What do you lose with LITE sites?
• Editorial enhancements
• Validation services (e.g. Keycite and Shepards)
• One search natural language boxes
• Robust terms and connectors
• Value added services (e.g. Folders, Custom
Menus, alerts, copy with citation… )
• Secondary source content
• Public records content
• Premium news content

51. Treatises
• Websites To Download Free EBooks
Google
Advanced
Search set to
PDF can find
treatises
Google
Advanced
Search set to
PDF can find
treatises

53. Document Repositories

54. Legal Scholarship Repositories
Legal Scholarship not in any
other database/site
Legal Scholarship not in any
other database/site

55. Law Reviews via Google Scholar

57. Open Web Court Decisions
• Megasites
• Boutique sites
• News sites
• Social media
• Court by Court
• No federated search
• But see Google Scholar
– scope is limited

59. Open Web : Docket Tracking
• NGO sites
• Court by court

60. Open Web Administrative Decisions
• Board of Patent Appeals & Interferences
• Trademark Trial and Appeals Board
• Copyright Appeals Letters
• Copyright Royalty Tribunal Opinions

61. Open Web Federal Statutes
• Megasites
• Boutique sites
• News sites
• Social media
• Government sites
• Agency sites link out

62. Legislation & Legislative History

64. • Megasites
• Boutique sites
• News sites
• Social media
• Government sites
– Agency sites link out…
Open Web Regulations

65. Open Web Procedural Manuals
• Manual of Patent Examination Procedures
• Trademark Manual of Examination Procedures
• Trademark Trial and Appeals Board Manual
• Compendium III: Copyright Office Practices

66. Open Web Legal Periodicals
• ABA Portal
• Visit each school
• Google Scholar
• Legal Scholars Network

67. Open Web : law firm newsletters

69. Web 2.0 & Social Networking
• Blogs
• Wikis
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Social bookmarking

70. Blogs

71. There’s an app for that…

72. Exercise: How does each Google
product serve an IP professional?

73. Foreign & International Law

74. • Directory of Intellectual
Property Offices
• WIPO Lex
• WIPO-Administered Treaties
• Patent Cooperation Treaty
• Trademark Law Treaty
• Madrid Protocol
• Internet Sources for
Intellectual Property Case
Law
• Agreement on Trade-
Related Aspects of
Intellectual Property
Rights ("TRIPS")
• Berne Convention
• Paris Convention
• Universal Copyright
Convention

75. Open Web Portals

76. General Foreign Law Sites
You will have to
develop you own
supplemental lists of
foreign law sites
You will have to
develop you own
supplemental lists of
foreign law sites

77. Featured
Open Source
Featured
Open Source

78. Patent Searching
• WIPO
• National Offices
• Regional Offices
• NGOs
– Many countries offer these

80. I. Evaluating Legal Research Tools
Coverage
Currency
Accuracy
Value Added Features
Authority
Appropriateness
Cost
Perspective
Design- Usability

81. Coverage
What is the depth and breath of coverage
Does the source provide more than a few years of
coverage?
Can you search for older cases?
In a caselaw database are there missing cases or missing
courts?
Are there statutes or regulations as well as cases?

82. Currency
Is the information up to date?
When was the code last updated?
What is the most recent case loaded to the database?
What is the revision cycle of the database?

83. Accuracy
Can you identify any missing documents?
Does the secondary source provide verifiable
information with citations?
Are there errors in the documents?
Can you verify that the document has not been
altered since publication?

84. Value Added Features – Content & Technology
Search Features
Search for a known citation (find a document)
Search multiple databases (multiple jurisdictions)
Table of Contents / Index / Popular Names Table
Citator (or a way to search for all cases that cited to a known
case or statute or regulation).
Sort Features
Control how you review results
Document Features
Headnotes
Topics & keynumber
Pinpoint Pagination
Hyperlinks within document

85. Technology
• One Search (e.g. Westlaw Next)
• Natural language
• Folders, favorites, practice centers & other
organizational tools

86. Authority
Can you identify:
the author
the qualifications of the author
how to contact the publisher / producer
verifiable citations to the documentation behind the
statements

87. Other Ways to Evaluate a Source
Appropriateness
Is it clear who the intended audience is
Is the language, illustrations, and format adequate for
the audience
Perspective
What is the goal of the source
Is there a bias or is it objective

88. Develop an analytical approach

89. In conclusion, change is constant
so stay in touch…