Ross, Brovins & Oehmke, P.C. v. Lexis Nexis Group

This is a copyright dispute regarding software for filling out legal forms. LawMode compiled and organized a number of Michigan legal forms and, using a Lexis owned program, created templates for filling out the forms. After marketing LawMode’s product for five years, Lexis terminated its contract with LawMode and proceeded to compile, create, and market its own set of Michigan form templates. LawMode sued Lexis for copyright violation and contract breach. We affirm the district court’s judgment dismissing LawMode’s copyright claims against Lexis. First, while LawMode has a valid copyright in both the selection of forms in its compilation and the organization of those forms, the copyrighted work is not substantially similar to the allegedly infringing Lexis product. Second, LawMode’s selection and placement of input items for its form templates involves too little creativity to warrant copyright protection, and Lexis consequently did not commit copyright infringement in this regard. However, we reverse the district court’s dismissal of LawMode’s breach-of-contract claim pursuant to a motion for judgment on the pleadings because LawMode stated a claim for breach of contract.

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