Who Owns the Law? Arguments May Ensue - New York Times, 9/29/08

Who Owns the Law? Arguments May Ensue:
"To be clear, it has been established by the United States Supreme Court (no less) that the law and judicial decisions cannot be copyrighted. They are in the public domain and can be used and reused in any way possible, even resold.
Yet, in the real world, judicial decisions and laws and regulations can be exceedingly hard to find without paying for them, either in book form or online...
“The law is pretty clear that laws and judicial opinions and regulations are not protected by copyright laws,” said Pamela Samuelson, a professor at Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. “That isn’t to say that people aren’t going to try.”
A favorite method of trying, as Ms. Samuelson and other legal scholars explain, is to copyright the accoutrements surrounding the public material...
In other words: the beer is free, but you have to pay for a specially designed stein."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/29/business/media/29link.html