We received this wonderful e-mail today from a Reuters attorney:
It has come to our attention that you are reproducing a Reuters contract on your web site at http://contracts.onecle.com/instinet/reuters.svc.2003.03.14.shtml.
Not only is this contract is marked confidential, it is proprietary to Reuters. Reuters has the exclusive right to this content in any form, including on the Internet. You have no right to display this content and are therefore acting illegally in republishing it in breach of our copyright. We therefore require that you immediately cease all further publication of Reuters content on any Web site owned or controlled by you, including www.onecle.com.
If you do not comply with the above request by close of business on November 1, 2007, we will be forced to consider what further action to take in order to protect our rights. In the meantime, all our rights are reserved.
Reuters takes the violation of its intellectual property rights very seriously and trusts that you will make every effort to comply with the above requirements in order to prevent any further infringement.
Sure, the document is marked “confidential.” But, the Global Solutions Agreement between Reuters Group and Instinet Group has been sitting on the SEC’s web site for 4 1/2 years by now. And, believe me, there are a lot of documents marked “confidential” in those securities filings.
The interesting twist here is that Thomson Corp. has agreed to buy Reuters. If you take a look at the Westlaw® Securities Practitioner, you will notice that they offer EDGAR-SEC Filings. And, if Onecle Inc. is engaging in copyright infringement by publishing selected contracts from public securities filings, then Thomson Corp. is a 27 billion dollar infringer who republishes all securities filings.