The Indigo Book
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The Indigo Book: An Open and Compatible Implementation of A Uniform System of Citation (formerly Baby Blue's Manual of Legal Citation) is a
The project was inspired by correspondence between Public.Resource.Org's founder
The Indigo Book is an unofficial substitute to the official Bluebook and is not endorsed by the Harvard Law Review Association; in December 2015, the project faced legal threats over its original name, Baby Blue's, which lawyers representing the HLRA felt was too similar to the Bluebook trademark. These threats led to the renaming of the guide to The Indigo Book in March 2016.
History
Research conducted by Malamud and Sprigman found that the 10th edition of the Bluebook, published in 1958, had fallen into the public domain because its copyright had not been
Sprigman explained that "every person, including every poor person, should be able to cite the law. Imprisoned litigants, pro se litigants, legal clinics, small law firms and solo practitioners — all of them need better access to our system of legal citation if the law is to work for them and for their clients. And that means free access."[3] Sprigman also stated that the use of an open-source development model and licensing would allow others to contribute to and help improve the system; he argued that the Bluebook in its current form was "over-prescriptive and rigid" and "a barrier to entry to our legal system", going on to ask, "what other standard of this importance to the American public would be entrusted to a group so small, unrepresentative, closed to input, and beyond both supervision and discipline?"[3]
Trademark issues
In December 2015, following Twitter postings by Malamud teasing the upcoming release of Baby Blue, the Harvard Law Review Association threatened legal action against the project, as it believed that the name Baby Blue had a confusing similarity to the "Bluebook" trademark, and requested a copy of the publication to perform intellectual property examinations under a presumption that it may be substantially similar to the copyrighted work. Sprigman objected to the trademark claims, feeling that "the idea they own the name 'blue' for a manual for legal citations is ridiculous." Following the threats, a group of over 120 Yale Law School students issued a letter in support of the Baby Blue project.[3][5] In response to the trademark concerns, the name of the guide was changed to The Indigo Book on March 31, 2016.[6][7]
See also
- Case citation
- Maroonbook
- ALWD Citation Manual
References
- ^ a b Sprigman, Christopher Jon (October 6, 2014). "HLR letter" (PDF). Retrieved April 21, 2016.
- ^ a b "Legal minds differ on whether The Bluebook is subject to copyright protection". ABA Journal. Retrieved April 21, 2016.
- ^ ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved March 1, 2016.
- ^ Leung, Peter C. (February 11, 2016). "Intellectual Property Blog: Is Copyright an Obstacle to Properly Cited Justice?". Bloomberg BNA. Archived from the original on February 13, 2016. Retrieved March 1, 2016.
- ^ "'Bluebook' Critics Incite Copyright Clash". The Wall Street Journal. December 28, 2015.
- ^ "Public Domain Citation Book, Baby Blue, Renamed To Indigo Book, Following Harvard Law Review Threats". Techdirt. Retrieved April 21, 2016.
- ^ Malamud, Carl (March 31, 2016). "Letter from Public Resource to Harvard Law Review Association" (PDF). public.resource.org. Retrieved April 22, 2016.