Notice of Settlement Approval in Thomson Reuters class action
On April 28, 2016, the Divisional Court approved the settlement the parties had reached in a class action against Thomson Reuters Corp. on behalf of a class of Canadian lawyers and law firms. The Notice of Settlement Approval is now available for members of the class to review.
The class action, which was certified in 2012, alleged that Thomson Reuters’ “Litigator” service, which is a fee and subscription-based database for lawyer-created court documents that permits users to copy and edit documents for their own purposes, breaches copyright by making available original lawyer created legal documents without permission from, or compensation to, the authors of the documents.
The parties reached a settlement of the class action in October 2013, but the Ontario Superior Court of Justice refused to approve the settlement. The Divisional Court allowed the plaintiff’s appeal and approved the settlement.
The Notice of Settlement Approval provides information about the settlement and directions on how to opt out of the class. The deadline to opt out is August 11, 2016.
More information is available here.