Plagiarism Police come for Winston & Strawn

Hsuanyeh Law Group v. Winston & Strawn , 23-cv-11193 (S.D.N.Y. 2024)
A recent copyright infringement lawsuit filed by small Boston intellectual property boutique Hsuanyeh Law Group PC (HLG) against international giant Winston & Strawn LLP focuses a dividing line that can highlight when copying the work of another firm is permissible.  I believe that Winston & Strawn will eventually prevail based upon a fair use defense, but it is still an embarrassing situation for the firm and attorneys involved.  I hope that they did not overbill the client.  The role of attribution is also receiving increasing focus as attorneys begin to rely more heavily on AI outputs for their legal documents.



Winston Strawn Plagiarism Complaint
Winston Strawn Plagiarism Attachments

I recall being asked to draft my first patent infringement complaint back in early 2003 – a few months after graduating from law school.  I relied heavily on prior filed complaints for form and content — adapting those writing to fit the facts of our particular lawsuit.  This form of copying and imitation is a longstanding legal tradition, but the question is whether copying ever goes too far.
In this case, HLG alleges that Winston & Strawn plagiarized a motion to dismiss that HLG had filed on behalf of a client in an earlier consolidated patent case.  Although plagiarism is not a cause of action, copyright infringement is – and that serves as the basis of the lawsuit here.
The Facts of the Case 
According to the complaint filed in the Southern District of New York, HLG represented Phison Electronics in a now-settled patent infringement case brought by Unification Technologies (UTL). Winston & Strawn represented another defendant, Silicon Motion, in a related case also filed by UTL.  The two cases were consolidated before the district court, though no joint defense agreement existed between the co-defendants.
HLG filed a motion to dismiss addressing UTL’s pre-suit willfulness allegations on August 23, 2023. The next day, Winston & Strawn allegedly filed a nearly identical motion on behalf of its client. HLG claims that entire sections were copied verbatim, including the introduction, and that Winston & Strawn “did not even rewrite their own introduction.” UTL highlighted the similarities between the two motions in its response opposing Winston & Strawn’s motion. HLG registered its motion with the Copyright Office shortly after it was filed (about 1-week later) and then reached out to Winston & Strawn to discuss the situation, but claims it was repeatedly ignored. HLG ultimately filed suit for copyright infringement.
The Constitutional promises of due process and the right to petition require that the law be available to all people – including corporate defendants and attorneys seeking access the courts.  The case thus raises questions about the extent to which legal pleadings and motions, as petitions to the government for redress, are protected speech. And, the implications of this lawsuit may extend to how law firms draft motions and whether they can freely use existing legal documents as templates without infringing on copyright.
Although I mentioned the constitutional principles above, the real defense will be Fair Use, that is generally thought to implicitly incorporate Constitutional principles into its nuanced and fact-intensive analysis. The American Bar Association’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct require attorneys to act with candor towards the tribunal. This includes a duty to avoid misleading the court, which could be relevant if a motion is presented as original work when it is substantially borrowed from another source.  Over the past year courts have been asking attorneys to expressly indicate whether their source was an AI.   It seems not too much to ask that attorneys to provide attribution when there is substantial verbatim copying.
The New York City Bar Association’s Formal Opinion 2018-3 provides important guidance on the ethical implications of copying language from other sources into legal briefs and filings. The Opinion concludes that while extensive verbatim copying without attribution is not best practice and risks judicial disapproval, such copying does not inherently violate Rule 8.4(c)’s prohibition on dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation.
The NYC Bar reasons that legal briefs serve to persuade the court on a client’s behalf, not to convey original ideas or analysis. As a result, some copying from secondary sources or prior briefs furthers clients’ interests in efficiency. Additionally, the Opinion emphasizes lawyers’ duties under other ethics rules regarding competence, diligence, candor to the tribunal, and avoidance of frivolous filings. By conscientiously adhering to all their professional responsibilities, lawyers can avoid any deception or other pitfalls from incorporating language from external sources. Ultimately, the Opinion urges attorneys to cite source materials where feasible, while concluding that the Rules of Professional Conduct do not necessarily require attribution.
The NYC Bar’s position is in contrast with that of several other courts that have condemned copying in briefs as plagiarism.  A key case on point is Iowa S. Ct. Atty. Disc. Bd. v. Cannon , 789 N.W.2d 756, 757 (Iowa 2010). In Cannon, the Iowa Supreme Court affirmed disciplinary action against a lawyer who filed a brief using work that was largely plagiarized from a published article.   The case explains that the district court was suspicious of the brief filed because it was “of unusually high quality.”  The court ordered Cannon to certify he was the author.  He responded that he was responsible for the briefs but had relied heavily upon a published article.  In affirming the violation, the Court wrote that:


Such massive, nearly verbatim copying of a published writing without attribution in the main brief, in our view, does amount to a misrepresentation that violates our ethical rules.


Id.  I suspect the Winston attorneys are likely happy to be in NY rather than Iowa.








In the case of White v. W. Pub. Corp., 29 F. Supp. 3d 396 (S.D.N.Y. 2014), a district court judge addressed the issue of copyright infringement in the context of legal briefs. The plaintiffs, attorneys who had filed briefs in a class action lawsuit, alleged that the defendants, West and LexisNexis, infringed their copyrights by including these briefs in their legal research databases. The court ruled in favor of the defendants, holding that their use of the briefs constituted “fair use” under the  Section 107 of the Copyright Act. The court found that the defendants’ inclusion of the briefs in their databases was transformative, as it contributed to creating an interactive legal research tool. Additionally, the court determined that this usage did not economically substitute the original use of the briefs in providing legal advice, nor did it impair any potential market for licensing these briefs, thereby reaffirming the defendants’ motion for summary judgment and dismissing the complaint with prejudice.
Similar issues also came up in the patent information disclosure statement cases a decade ago. In American Institute of Physics v. Winstead PC , a Texas federal court held that a law firm’s use of copyrighted scientific journal articles in patent applications constituted fair use as a matter of law. 2013 WL 6242843, at *1 (N.D. Tex. Dec. 3, 2013). The court found that the law firm’s evidentiary purpose in submitting the articles to the patent office was transformative and the articles served “an evidentiary function” in “alerting the USPTO to relevant prior art.” Likewise, in American Institute of Physics v. Schwegman, Lundberg & Woessner, P.A. , a Minnesota federal court also concluded the law firm’s use of scientific journal articles in the patent prosecution process was fair based on the transformative nature of the use and lack of market harm. 2013 WL 4666330, at *1 (D. Minn. Aug. 30, 2013). The Schwegman court reiterated the reasoning from Winstead , holding the law firm used the articles “for a new and different purpose” as evidence to fulfill duties of disclosure to the patent office.



























HLG v. Winston & Strawn sets up an interesting interplay between copyright and plagiarism. While I expect an outcome in favor of Winston & Strawn in its fair use defense, the case highlights the ongoing debate over the extent to which legal professionals can rely on the work of others – especially as we move into the AI world.