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Il riuso dei dati pubblici in prospettiva europea: il progetto Caselex

Mariangela Biasiotti, Sebastiano Faro, Roberta Nannucci

ITTIG/CNR

Supported by theEuropean Commission

DAE 20065° Convegno Nazionale

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The eContent programme

eContent has been a market oriented programme which aimed to support the production, use and distribution of European digital content and to promote linguistic and cultural diversity on the global networks.

eContent Programme which covered the period 2001-2004, is now closed.

Following a vote by the European Parliament, the EU Council reached political agreement on the eContentplus Programme, which aims to support the development of multi-lingual content for innovative, on-line services across the EU.

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The Caselex Project

CASELEX will serve as a European case law backbone accessing and converting the comprehensive base of case law into easy obtainable and usable knowledge for open distribution through intermediaries and directly to end-users

The content being perceived as most useful, from the vast numbers of courts and law cases across Europe is the ones that has a European potential by clustering around European rules, mainly EU Directives, such as: Copyright Directive, Electronic Commerce Directive etc., an originating from:

– National Supreme Courts, High Courts and other superior courts;

– European Court of Justice and EFTA Court of Justice;

– and other important cases of lower courts complementing the above.

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Caselex European alliance

• ITTIG (Italy)

• ZENC BV (Netherlands)

• Tilburg University (Netherlands)

• University of Namur (Belgium)

• First Law (Ireland)

• WordWave (UK)

• Retriever/Schibsted (Norway)

• Cour de Cassation (Belgium)

• La Direction des Journaux officiels (France)

• Centre of Judiciary Information (Spain)

• Ministry of Justice, DGSIA (Italy)

• Ministry of Justice, TIC (Lithuania)

• European Association of Judges (Italy)

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Caselex and the PSI directive

Reaping the full benefits of the PSI Directive requires much more than simple compliance with a set of rules; it requires a change in functioning and even thinking of governments throughout the Member States.

The PSI Directive calls for a change of spirit and this is exactly what CASELEX will do: it will seek to foster a new climate among the parties in the value chain (in particular courts in relation to established publishers) to open up their under resources to all and to allow for re-use against transparent and non-discriminatory conditions

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Case law: the Missing Link in the Democratic Information Triangle

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Mission and target groups

One-stop-shop for international and national case lawof use across borders for legal professionals

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What will Caselex bring to the legal practice?• Easy to use Internet based research assistant to access all important

cross-border case law from Europe relevant to legal professionals’ work in commercial areas of law without need for multilingual and multinational legal skills

– Common denominator: European Community law and international law

National scope before Caselex European scope after Caselex

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Q10 Need for Caselex

I really need this s

This is an improvem

e

Looks okay but is th

My current inform

ati

I am not at all inte

Have not made up m

y

Fre

qu

en

cy

300

200

100

0

83

207

24

84

Legal professionals need foreign national case law

• Legal professionals go international with their clients

• European Community law is – becoming more important– the common denominator

motivating Caselex’ users to seek relevant case law from foreign jurisdictions

• Court cases on European Community law are source of inspiration and solutions to common legal issues across borders

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Legal professionals will use CaselexQ8. Acquire important foreign court case

5 Extremely likely4321 Unlikely

Fre

qu

en

cy

200

150

100

50

0

183

121

65

34

14

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Legal Pro’s core brings key cases without need for multilingual and multinational legal skills

• Court cases from national Supreme and higher/special courts linked to European Community law

– Aim to cover all EU and EFTA States– Will also cover European Court of

Justice and Court of First Instance, next to the EFTA Court of Justice

• Commercial areas of law starting point– Competition law, Company law, IPR,

Labour law, Consumer law, Banking, etc

• Up to date on, and timely delivery of, current cases

– 1300-1500 new cases yearly– Will steadily add historical cases– Archive contains currently 250+ cases

Area of law

Case law map

Court case repository

Community law

Member State X law

Member State Y law

Law link look-up and case

macthing

Court case 1, Member State X

Court case 2, Member State Y

Court case n, Member State Z

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Modular service

• Core module is initial starting point of Caselex

– Cases within commercial areas of law from supreme and higher/special courts

• Additional modules to be rolled out successively

1. Competition authorities

2. Lower and regional courts

3. Market councils and authorities

4. Sectorial authorities

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Added value content and services

• Enriched content– Full text decision in native language with possibility for

translation on demand– Multilingual headnote and summary on all full text cases

• Written by legal professionals for legal professionals• Summary to act as informative teaser to procure Translation on

Demand

– All cases classified according to multilingual thesaurus

• Knowledge explorer: Browse and search– Simple and advanced search– Drill down browsing

• Multiple entry doors when browsing and searching– Area of law (based on multilingual thesaurus), Country, National law &

provisions, EC law

• Multilingual services and content– Aim is English, French, Spanish, German, Italian

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User centric service

• Customisation: “My Caselex” based on interest profile and usage– My archive by customised classification; Stored searches; Alert services; etc

• Knowledge capture– Personal notes to be added to cases– Personal notes to be shareable and allowed integrated into organisational

knowledge space– Editorial function to organise cases and notes attached to cases following own

classification

• Responsiveness– Feedback mechanism– Lawyers and judges allowed to suggest cases for inclusion and deliver case texts

with headnote, summary and metadata classification

• Multilingual Help Desk– English, French, German (+ Italian and Spanish?)

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Value chain focus

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Caselex Reference

Caselex website

http://www.caselex.com/

http://www.caselex.eu