At least that’s what Ed Walters of Fastcase believes. To back up that belief, Fastcase has filed a lawsuit against Casemaker in the U.S. District Court in Atlanta. According to our friend and colleague Bob Ambrogi, “Casemaker’s parent company, Lawriter, has an agreement with the Georgia Secretary of State designating it as the exclusive publisher of the Georgia Rules and Regulations and giving it the right to license that content to other publishers.”

It seems pretty crazy to me that Casemaker thinks it has an exclusive right to provide court data to the public. Just because some states don’t have the budget dollars to post court information online for the public shouldn’t mean that the service provider owns the data.

We are honored to have Ed as a speaker at this year’s ABA TECHSHOW. He will be speaking with Adam Nguyen on what’s-sure-to-be a fascinating session titled “Data is the New Oil – Lessons from Standard Oil, Smart Diapers, and Uber for Law Firms.”

John Simek is the Vice President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc., an information technology, digital forensics and information security firm located in Fairfax, VA. Mr. Simek has a national reputation as a digital forensics technologist and has testified as an expert witness throughout the United States. He holds a degree in engineering from the United States Merchant Marine Academy and an MBA in finance from Saint Joseph’s University.

He blogs at youritconsultant.senseient.com and may be reached at jsimek@senseient.com