West - Thomson Reuters does just fine publishing public domain statutes and court decisions. They do it by adding value. West’s digests, indexes, annotations and search technology are (along with the same services produced by rival Lexis/Nexis) are the standard for legal research. It would very nearly amount to malpractice to submit papers in court that were researched in any other way, even though one could do so.
And don’t try to tell me that standards are different from statutes because the former have development costs and the latter do not. The legislative history of a statute is essential to creating an valid, enforceable law, and that history is developed by the statute-creating body researching the reasons to create the statute, the potential effects of the proposed statute-- including revenue effects. Hearings are held, experts are consulted- the process works exactly like developing standards for things like building codes.
