Talk:MacCormick v. Lord Advocate

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Mainly from stuff Google could find. If someone with access to a decent law library could confirm and expand things, that would be helpful. Marnanel 00:36, May 20, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Importance?

Quoth the article:

The outcome of this case became of great relevance in 1999, when the British parliament was proposing the creation of a Scottish parliament.

Can someone explain why this is so? --Jfruh 7 July 2005 13:45 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright question

On 13 November 2005, I added the text of the Lord President's opinion in this case. I noted that "Opinions of the Scottish courts are nominally crown copyright, but copyright is waived so long as quotation is accurate." On 9 December, however, Cynical deleted this with an assertion that this text was in some way the copyright of a commercial publisher, Westlaw. That assertion is wrong. I have reverted the deletion. This note is to explain the true copyright position.

in the UK, judicial opinions are generally accepted to be Crown copyright (though there is an argument that they are copyright of individual judges, or that they were so until 1988; see 'Crown Copyright in the United Kingdom'). This opinion was issued in 1953, so it passed out of copyright in 2003 (Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988, section 163(2)). In any event, it has been agreed since at least the mid-nineteenth century that judgments (as opposed to added-value material such as headnotes, footnotes) may be freely reproduced so long as the reproduction is accurate, and no publisher has ever sought permission to reproduce judgements; section 45(2) of the 1988 Act is generally accepted as authorising this, but to avoid any doubt HMSO has made this right clear informally. Nor has any publisher ever suggested that reproduction of the text of judgments breaches their copyright; they would be cutting their own throats if they did so!

All that was added was the text of the opinion itself. What I think Cynical may have had in mind is the commentary in the Session Cases edition of the report, which was not reproduced. Until 1957, the Session Cases were published by the Faculty of Advocates, which accordingly holds the copyright in the commentary on this case (and on its typography, also not reproduced). From 1958, Session Cases were published by the Scottish Council of Law Reporting (SCLR), which accordingly holds that copyright (and which asserts it). Since 2003, the SCLR has contracted with a number of commercial publishers to publish electronic versions of the Session Cases back to 1930. One of these (not the first) is Westlaw, who Cynical refers to as copyright-holder in the text of the judgment. In fact, none of these publishers have any more than a non-exclusive licence to publish in the first place; SCLR continues to retain copyright in its original work. But neither the commercial publishers, nor SCLR, have, or claims to have, any copyright in the work which SCLR, and before it the Faculty of Advocates, took from the judges with neither express permission nor payment (as they were entitled to, because neither were ever sought by the judges or by the Crown).

What was added, and now reinstated, is accordingly copyright-free. Ariwara 18:46, 5 January 2006 (UTC) .

• I would agree with that statement. Astrotrain 11:07, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

• If we can use it, it ought to be in Wikisource, not here. Hairy Dude 05:15, 12 November 2006 (UTC)