Wexis is a humorous

portmanteau In linguistics, a blend—also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or portmanteau—is a word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together.

used to refer to the alleged

duopoly A duopoly (from Greek , ; and , ) is a type of oligopoly where two firms have dominant or exclusive control over a market, and most (if not all) of the competition within that market occurs directly between them. Duopoly is the most commonly ...

publishing Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...

conglomerates that dominate the

U.S. The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous ...

legal information services industry – namely,

West Publishing West (also known by its original name, West Publishing) is a business owned by Thomson Reuters that publishes legal, business, and regulatory information in print, and on electronic services such as Westlaw. Since the late 19th century, West has ...

and

LexisNexis LexisNexis is an American data analytics company headquartered in New York, New York. Its products are various databases that are accessed through online portals, including portals for computer-assisted legal research (CALR), newspaper searc ...

. Neither of these companies is independent – they are parts of much larger conglomerates that dominate the entire information services sector. West is owned by

Thomson Reuters Thomson Reuters Corporation ( ) is a Canadian multinational corporation, multinational content-driven technology Conglomerate (company), conglomerate. The company was founded in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and maintains its headquarters at 1 ...

, while LexisNexis is a division of

RELX Group RELX plc (pronounced "Rel-ex") is a British multinational information and analytics company headquartered in London, England. Its businesses provide scientific, technical and medical information and analytics; legal information and analytics; ...

. These companies dispute the allegation that they are a duopoly; LexisNexis sued ''TheLaw.net'' which used the terms "Wexis" and "duopoly" in its marketing literature.

Antitrust issues

The

United States district court The United States district courts are the trial courts of the United States federal judiciary, U.S. federal judiciary. There is one district court for each United States federal judicial district, federal judicial district. Each district cov ...

imposed various requirements regarding the companies' operations in a consent decree resulting from an

antitrust Competition law is the field of law that promotes or seeks to maintain market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies. Competition law is implemented through public and private enforcement. It is also known as antitrust l ...

inquiry by the

United States Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a United States federal executive departments, federal executive department of the U.S. government that oversees the domestic enforcement of Law of the Unite ...

under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act in connection with Thomson's purchase of West Publishing, and West's and Lexis's settlement of various outstanding claims in that proceeding. For example, West was required to license the "star pagination" in its printed

reporters A journalist is a person who gathers information in the form of text, audio or pictures, processes it into a newsworthy form and disseminates it to the public. This is called journalism. Roles Journalists can work in broadcast, print, adverti ...

under certain terms. Otherwise,

lawyer A lawyer is a person who is qualified to offer advice about the law, draft legal documents, or represent individuals in legal matters. The exact nature of a lawyer's work varies depending on the legal jurisdiction and the legal system, as w ...

s in jurisdictions that require citations to all official and unofficial reporters would have to subscribe to ''both'' online services to get all the necessary page numbers for

citations A citation is a reference to a source. More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression embedded in the body of an intellectual work that denotes an entry in the bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose o ...

in their briefs. The judge also had concerns about the Thomson and West products ordered to be

divested In finance and economics, divestment or divestiture is the reduction of some kind of asset for financial, ethical, or political objectives or sale of an existing business by a firm. A divestment is the opposite of an investment. Divestiture is a ...

through a sale to Lexis, primarily

statutory A statute is a law or formal written enactment of a legislature. Statutes typically declare, command or prohibit something. Statutes are distinguished from court law and unwritten law (also known as common law) in that they are the expressed wil ...

and

case law Case law, also used interchangeably with common law, is a law that is based on precedents, that is the judicial decisions from previous cases, rather than law based on constitutions, statutes, or regulations. Case law uses the detailed facts of ...

publications of Lawyers Cooperative Publishing, such as '' United States Supreme Court Reports, Lawyers' Edition'' and '' United States Code Service'', but those sales were ultimately approved. Both companies are known for their aggressive marketing programs in American

law school A law school (also known as a law centre/center, college of law, or faculty of law) is an institution, professional school, or department of a college or university specializing in legal education, usually involved as part of a process for b ...

s. Law students may print documents for free that are obtained through their respective services. Both companies ran programs through which students earned points (based on their number of searches) that could be redeemed for free gifts. While LexisNexis still runs its rewards program, Westlaw has discontinued its promotion.

Wolters Kluwer Wolters Kluwer N.V. is a Dutch information services company. The company serves legal, business, tax, accounting, finance, audit, risk, compliance, and healthcare markets. Wolters Kluwer in its current form was founded in 1987 with a merger bet ...

is the largest company which to date has attempted to establish a beachhead against the "Wexis" duopoly. At one point, it took over offline legal publishers like Aspen Publishing and online legal services like Loislaw, and also owns Commerce Clearing House (CCH). However, Wolters never developed an automated cross-referencing or citation-checking service that could directly compete against

Westlaw Westlaw is an Computer-assisted legal research, online legal research service and proprietary database for lawyers and legal professionals available in over 60 countries. Information resources on Westlaw include more than 40,000 databases of ca ...

's KeyCite or

Shepard's Citations ''Shepard's Citations'' is a citator used in United States legal research that provides a list of all the authorities citing a particular case, statute, or other legal authority. The verb ''Shepardizing'' (sometimes written lower-case) refers t ...

from LexisNexis. Wolters eventually sold Loislaw in 2015 and Aspen in 2021, but still owns CCH. Bloomberg Industry Group is the best known of the remaining law publishing companies. Both Bloomberg and CCH have arrangements with Lexis and Westlaw to publish their content though those electronic services, although they also provide their

subscribers The subscription business model is a business model in which a customer must pay a recurring price at regular intervals for access to a product or service. The model was pioneered by publishers of books and periodicals in the 17th century. It ...

web access to certain publications.

References

Law of the United States Legal research

Antitrust issues

See also

References