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WestlawWestlaw is one of two major fee-based online legal research systems, the other being LexisNexis. Westlaw is a product of Thomson West, a major part of the Thomson Legal & Regulatory division of The Thomson Corporation. It provides access to state and federal statutes, case law materials, public records, and other legal resources. Its 16,000 or more databases contain legal information and much more. The West Key Number System is the West master classification system of U.S. law, claimed to be "the only recognized legal taxonomy". Branch businesses are based in Argentina, Canada, Denmark, Spain, and Sweden. Westlaw's chief competitor, LexisNexis, is a division of Reed Elsevier. The two companies dominate the legal information services industry in the United States, and sometimes are referred to as Wexis. In the mid 1980s, Westlaw sued LexisNexis over copyright infringement (West Pub. Co. v. Mead Data Cent., Inc. 1986 (799 F.2d 1219; cert denied)). LexisNexis's "star pagination" system, a feature which allowed users of either research system to find the printed page of a case without looking to the actual book, was found infringed West's copyrights. - ... with the LEXIS Star Pagination Feature, LEXIS users would be able to determine the West page number corresponding to the portion of an opinion viewed on LEXIS without ever physically referring to the West publication in which the opinion appears.
LexisNexis now pays Westlaw for a license to use the system. Because of the prevalence of Westlaw within Thomson West's product offerings, many Thomson West customers use the name "Westlaw" to refer to the entire West organization. In February 2005, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer publicized the fact that Westlaw has a database containing a large amount of private information on practically all living Americans. Besides obvious items like current residence addresses and phone numbers, Westlaw also includes Social Security numbers, previous addresses, and dates of birth. These latter items are particularly controversial because they can be used for identity theft. See also External link
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