Having a monopoly on a naming convention of a fundamental building block of a nationwide industry (the legal industry) has been a pretty sweet deal for West Publishing for over one hundred years but it’s been eroding over the past twenty years and at an ever-increasing speed in recent years.
As all lawyers know, West’s “reporters,” or massive volumes of published legal decisions, have provided a system of “citation” so that we’re sure we are all “on the same page” when discussing a particular “Smith vs. Jones” case (that is, for example, 256 F.3d 1135 (2001)).