A proposed class action was commenced on May 25, 2010 against Thomson Reuters Corporation and Thomson Reuters Canada Limited on behalf of a class of Canadian lawyers and law firms.

The Statement of Claim (which has not been proven in Court) alleges that Thomson Reuters breaches copyright by making available original lawyer created legal documents for fee or subscription without permission from, or compensation to, the authors of the documents.

The lead plaintiff is Lorne Waldman, one of Canada’s leading lawyers, specializing in immigration and refugee law. Mr. Waldman was counsel to Maher Arar.

The claim alleges that legal documents written by Mr. Waldman, on behalf of Mr. Arar, (along with more than 50,000 other documents) have been copied by Thomson Reuters and that verbatim copies of these documents have been made available for download via its “Litigator” service. Litigator is a fee and subscription-based database for lawyer-created court documents that permits users to copy and edit documents for their own purposes. At no time are the authors of these documents informed that their documents are copied, sold, or reproduced. Documents downloaded from this service are branded “© Thomson Reuters Canada Limited or its Licensors. All rights reserved.”

Click here to read the Statement of Claim in this proposed class action. The schedules to the Statement of Claim are available here.

Mr. Waldman is represented by Louis Sokolov and Jordan Goldblatt.

Information on this action and for prospective class members is available at trcopyright.ca.