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58-463: Westlaw is an 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 case law , state and federal statutes , administrative codes, newspaper and magazine articles, public records, law journals, law reviews, treatises , legal forms and other information resources. Most legal documents on Westlaw are indexed to

116-433: A federated search across multiple content types. Users can either enter descriptive terms or Boolean connectors and select a jurisdiction. Documents are ranked by relevance. WestlawNext also supports retrieving documents by citation, party name or KeyCite reference. An overview page enables users to see the top results per content type, or to view all results for a particular content type. Filters can also be applied to refine

174-550: A "one-to-many" link, an "extended link" or a "multi-tailed link") is a hyperlink which leads to multiple endpoints; the link is a set-valued function . Tim Berners-Lee saw the possibility of using hyperlinks to link any information to any other information over the Internet . Hyperlinks were therefore integral to the creation of the World Wide Web . Web pages are written in the hypertext mark-up language HTML . This

232-411: A "trail" of related information, and then scroll back and forth among pages in a trail as if they were on a single microfilm reel. In a series of books and articles published from 1964 through 1980, Nelson transposed Bush's concept of automated cross-referencing into the computer context, made it applicable to specific text strings rather than whole pages, generalized it from a local desk-sized machine to

290-608: A case without looking to the actual book, was found to infringe West's copyrights by the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota . After Lexis' appeals were turned down by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals , the company entered into an agreement to pay West $ 50,000 per year to license West's pagination and text corrections. No other publisher was offered similar terms, and

348-561: A document, e.g. a webpage , or other resource, or to a position in a webpage. The latter is achieved by means of an HTML element with a "name" or "id" attribute at that position of the HTML document. The URL of the position is the URL of the webpage with a fragment identifier  – "# id attribute " – appended. When linking to PDF documents from an HTML page the " id attribute " can be replaced with syntax that references

406-431: A graphical user interface, the appearance of a mouse cursor may change into a hand motif to indicate a link. In most graphical web browsers, links are displayed in underlined blue text when they have not been visited, but underlined purple text when they have. When the user activates the link (e.g., by clicking on it with the mouse ) the browser displays the link's target. If the target is not an HTML file, depending on

464-562: A hyperlink is known as its source document. For example, in content from Misplaced Pages or Google Search , many words and terms in the text are hyperlinked to definitions of those terms. Hyperlinks are often used to implement reference mechanisms such as tables of contents, footnotes , bibliographies , indexes , and glossaries . In some hypertext, hyperlinks can be bidirectional: they can be followed in two directions, so both ends act as anchors and as targets. More complex arrangements exist, such as many-to-many links. The effect of following

522-421: A hyperlink may vary with the hypertext system and may sometimes depend on the link itself; for instance, on the World Wide Web most hyperlinks cause the target document to replace the document being displayed, but some are marked to cause the target document to open in a new window (or, perhaps, in a new tab ). Another possibility is transclusion , for which the link target is a document fragment that replaces

580-410: A list of all the authorities citing a particular case, statute, or other legal authority. Verification of citations is necessary, because lawyers must determine whether a case has been reversed, overruled, or modified by a subsequent case before citing it in court. Further, when interpreting a statute it is necessary to examine previous judicial interpretations. The United States judiciary operates under

638-550: A necessary part of American legal research that the process of citation checking is still informally referred to as "Shepardizing." In 2004, KeyCite was the most-used citation checking service in an annual survey of law firm technology use conducted by the American Bar Association . WestCheck is software that extracts citations from a word processing document and submits them to KeyCite or to Westlaw for retrieval of full text documents. The software consists of

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696-407: A new window to be created. It is especially common to see this type of link when one large website links to an external page. The intention in that case is to ensure that the person browsing is aware that there is no endorsement of the site being linked to by the site that was linked from. However, the attribute is sometimes overused and can sometimes cause many windows to be created even while browsing

754-541: A page number or another element of the PDF, for example, "# page=386 ". A web browser usually displays a hyperlink in some distinguishing way, e.g. in a different color , font or style , or with certain symbols following to visualize link target or document types. This is also called link decoration . The behavior and style of links can be specified using the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) language. In

812-473: A regular window , but in a special hover box , which disappears when the cursor is moved away (sometimes it disappears anyway after a few seconds, and reappears when the cursor is moved away and back). Mozilla Firefox , IE , Opera , and many other web browsers all show the URL. In addition, the URL is commonly shown in the status bar . Normally, a link opens in the current frame or window, but sites that use frames and multiple windows for navigation can add

870-562: A single document (1966), and soon after for connecting between paragraphs within separate documents (1968), with NLS . Ben Shneiderman working with graduate student Dan Ostroff designed and implemented the highlighted link in the HyperTIES system in 1983. HyperTIES was used to produce the world's first electronic journal, the July 1988 Communications of the ACM , which was cited as the source for

928-542: A single site. Another special page name is "_top", which causes any frames in the current window to be cleared away so that browsing can continue in the full window. The term "link" was coined in 1965 (or possibly 1964) by Ted Nelson at the start of Project Xanadu . Nelson had been inspired by " As We May Think ", a popular 1945 essay by Vannevar Bush . In the essay, Bush described a microfilm-based machine (the Memex ) in which one could link any two pages of information into

986-465: A special "target" attribute to specify where the link loads. If no window exists with that name, a new window is created with the ID, which can be used to refer to the window later in the browsing session. Creation of new windows is probably the most common use of the "target" attribute. To prevent accidental reuse of a window, the special window names "_blank" and "_new" are usually available, and always cause

1044-430: A standalone program and word processor add-in, either of which may be used, and a web site with the same functionality. West also provides BriefTools, which replaces West CiteLink, and provides citation checking and file retrieval services within a word processing document. Another version only inserts Westlaw links into documents. West CiteAdvisor formats citations and creates a table of authorities. Like WestCheck, it

1102-424: A theoretical proprietary worldwide computer network, and advocated the creation of such a network. Though Nelson's Xanadu Corporation was eventually funded by Autodesk in the 1980s, it never created this proprietary public-access network. Meanwhile, working independently, a team led by Douglas Engelbart (with Jeff Rulifson as chief programmer ) was the first to implement the hyperlink concept for scrolling within

1160-437: A typical web browser, this would display as the underlined word "Example" in blue, which when clicked would take the user to the example.com website. This contributes to a clean, easy to read text or document. By default, browsers will usually display hyperlinks as such: When the cursor hovers over a link, depending on the browser and graphical user interface, some informative text about the link can be shown, popping up, not in

1218-414: A whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text with hyperlinks. The text that is linked from is known as anchor text . A software system that is used for viewing and creating hypertext is a hypertext system , and to create a hyperlink is to hyperlink (or simply to link ). A user following hyperlinks is said to navigate or browse the hypertext. The document containing

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1276-402: Is Westlaw's online courseware that is specifically tailored for law schools . It is used as an online extension of the classroom. Teachers use it to post syllabi, PowerPoint presentations, class materials and announcements. TWEN is also used for emailing, forum posting, live chats, polling, linking to CALI Lessons and posting/submitting assignments. (In terms of this range of functionality, TWEN

1334-579: Is a distinction between the mere act of linking to someone else's website, and linking to content that is illegal (e.g., gambling illegal in the US) or infringing (e.g., illegal MP3 copies). Several courts have found that merely linking to someone else's website, even if by bypassing commercial advertising, is not copyright or trademark infringement, regardless of how much someone else might object. Linking to illegal or infringing content can be sufficiently problematic to give rise to legal liability. Compare for

1392-420: Is a master classification system of U.S. law, and is claimed to be "the only recognized legal taxonomy ." The West Key Number System was created by West Publishing Company and can be described as a highly detailed index of over 110,000 legal topics and sub-topics. The index serves as the backbone for legal information published by West, which appears in the company's print publications, and now on Westlaw . TWEN

1450-623: Is added. In certain jurisdictions , it is or has been held that hyperlinks are not merely references or citations , but are devices for copying web pages. In the Netherlands, Karin Spaink was initially convicted in this way of copyright infringement by linking, although this ruling was overturned in 2003. The courts that advocate this view see the mere publication of a hyperlink that connects to illegal material to be an illegal act in itself, regardless of whether referencing illegal material

1508-594: Is available online at citeadvisor.westlaw.com, or as software for a word processor. Westlaw CourtExpress allows searching of court docket information. Westlaw Watch allows users to manage periodic monitoring of news and other databases for topics of interest. Westlaw WebPlus provides a web search engine with a focus on legal information sites. The Westlaw Litigator website provides access to legal calendaring and other litigation related applications. Westlaw Today curates legal news and email alerts written by attorneys and Reuters reporters. The West Key Number System

1566-463: Is illegal. In 2004, Josephine Ho was acquitted of 'hyperlinks that corrupt traditional values' in Taiwan . In 2000, British Telecom sued Prodigy , claiming that Prodigy infringed its patent ( U.S. patent 4,873,662 ) on web hyperlinks. After litigation , a court found for Prodigy, ruling that British Telecom 's patent did not cover web hyperlinks. In United States jurisprudence , there

1624-443: Is not allowed without permission. Contentious in particular are deep links , which do not point to a site's home page or other entry point designated by the site owner, but to content elsewhere, allowing the user to bypass the site's own designated flow, and inline links , which incorporate the content in question into the pages of the linking site, making it seem part of the linking site's own content unless an explicit attribution

1682-516: Is similar to other educational systems such as Blackboard, marketed by Blackboard Inc. ). Law school professors occasionally use it for their classes, and it is used by librarians and career services offices. Students can also create and manage their own courses for law reviews, journals and any student organization. In February 2005, after the ChoicePoint identity theft incidents became public, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) publicized

1740-741: Is what a hyperlink to the home page of the W3C organization could look like in HTML code: This HTML code consists of several tags : Webgraph is a graph , formed from web pages as vertices and hyperlinks, as directed edges. The W3C recommendation called XLink describes hyperlinks that offer a far greater degree of functionality than those offered in HTML. These extended links can be multidirectional , remove linking from, within, and between XML documents. It can also describe simple links , which are unidirectional and therefore offer no more functionality than hyperlinks in HTML. Permalinks are URLs that are intended to remain unchanged for many years into

1798-511: Is why a link to a fragment is called an anchor link (that is, a link to an anchor). For example, in XML , the element <anchor id="name" />" provides anchoring capability (as long as the DTD or schema defines it), and in wiki markup , {{anchor|name}} is a typical example of implementing it. In word processor apps, anchors can be inserted where desired and may be called bookmarks . In URLs ,

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1856-524: The West Key Number System , which is West's master classification system of U.S. law. Westlaw supports natural language and Boolean searches . Other significant Westlaw features include KeyCite, a citation checking service, which customers use to determine whether cases or statutes are still good law, and a customizable tabbed interface that lets customers bring their most-used resources to the top. Other tabs organize Westlaw content around

1914-509: The file type and on the browser and its plugins , another program may be activated to open the file. The HTML code contains some or all of the five main characteristics of a link: It uses the HTML element "a" with the attribute "href" (HREF is an abbreviation for "Hypertext REFerence" ) and optionally also the attributes "title", "target", and " class " or "id": To embed a link into a web page, blogpost, or comment, it may take this form: In

1972-599: The United States have their own Westlaw sites, and Westlaw's foreign content is available online. For instance, Westlaw Canada from Carswell includes the Canadian Abridgment and KeyCite Canada, and Westlaw UK provides information from Sweet & Maxwell and independent law reports , case analysis and case status icons. More recently, Westlaw China was introduced, with laws and regulations, cases, digests, and status icons (similar to KeyCite flags), for

2030-503: The West Key Number System to determine and immediately alert legal professionals that case law they are reviewing has been either overturned, or may have history that deems the precedential value of the opinion invalid. KeyCite was introduced to Westlaw in 1997 and was the first citator to seriously challenge Shepard's Citations , on which American legal professionals had relied for generations. Shepard's had become such

2088-525: The Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request from 172.68.168.226 via cp1108 cp1108, Varnish XID 227192206 Upstream caches: cp1108 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Thu, 28 Nov 2024 08:39:50 GMT Hyperlink In computing , a hyperlink , or simply a link , is a digital reference to data that the user can follow or be guided to by clicking or tapping . A hyperlink points to

2146-402: The company responded to the controversy by announcing it had eliminated access to full SSNs for 85 percent of its clients who previously could retrieve this information, mostly lawyers and government agencies. In the mid-1980s, Westlaw sued LexisNexis over copyright infringement . LexisNexis's "star pagination" system, a feature that let users of either research system find the printed page of

2204-442: The fact that Westlaw has a database containing a large amount of private information on practically all living Americans. Besides widely available information such as addresses and phone numbers, Westlaw also includes Social Security numbers (SSNs), previous addresses, dates of birth, and other information lawyers use to do background checks on behalf of their clients. While there is no known case of identity theft involving Westlaw,

2262-485: The full linked content is not needed, as is the case when rearranging a page layout . An anchor hyperlink (anchor link) is a link bound to a portion of a document, which is often called a fragment . The fragment is generally a portion of text or a heading, though not necessarily. For instance, it may also be a hot area in an image ( image map in HTML ), a designated, often irregular part of an image. Fragments are marked with anchors (in any of various ways), which

2320-621: The future, yielding hyperlinks that are less susceptible to link rot . Permalinks are often rendered simply, that is, as friendly URLs, so as to be easy for people to type and remember. Permalinks are used in order to point and redirect readers to the same Web page , blog post or any online digital media. The scientific literature is a place where link persistence is crucial to the public knowledge. A 2013 study in BMC Bioinformatics analyzed 15,000 links in abstracts from Thomson Reuters' Web of Science citation index, founding that

2378-438: The hash character (#) precedes the name of the anchor for the fragment. One way to define a hot area in an image is by a list of coordinates that indicate its boundaries. For example, a political map of Africa may have each country hyperlinked to further information about that country. A separate invisible hot area interface allows for swapping skins or labels within the linked hot areas without repetitive embedding of links in

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2436-653: The law of the People's Republic of China . Westlaw Ireland (IE) was established in 2002, covering information found in Round Hall publications as well as legislation, books, cases, current awareness and full-text articles from many of the country's notable legal journals. Westlaw is used in over 68 countries. Westlaw is descended from QUIC/LAW, a Canadian computer-assisted legal research project operated by Queen's University from 1968 to 1973. The original name stood for "Queen's University Investigation of Computers and Law." It

2494-456: The link anchor within the source document. Not only persons browsing the document may follow hyperlinks. These hyperlinks may also be followed automatically by programs. A program that traverses the hypertext, following each hyperlink and gathering all the retrieved documents is known as a Web spider or crawler . An inline link displays remote content without the need for embedding the content. The remote content may be accessed with or without

2552-586: The link concept in Tim Berners-Lee 's Spring 1989 manifesto for the Web. In 1988, Ben Shneiderman and Greg Kearsley used HyperTIES to publish "Hypertext Hands-On!", the world's first electronic book. Released in 1987 for the Apple Macintosh , the database program HyperCard allowed for hyperlinking between various pages within a document, as well as to other documents and separate applications on

2610-412: The median lifespan of Web pages was 9.3 years, and just 62% were archived. The median lifespan of a Web page constitutes high-degree variable, but its order of magnitude usually is of some months. A link from one domain to another is said to be outbound from its source anchor and inbound to its target. The most common destination anchor is a URL used in the World Wide Web . This can refer to

2668-465: The original foundation for what would become Westlaw. West's chief competitor in the legal information retrieval market is LexisNexis . (Ironically, Lawford and von Briesen sold what by then was called QuickLaw to LexisNexis in 2002.) Both Westlaw and LexisNexis started in the 1970s as dial-up services with dedicated terminals. The earliest versions used acoustic couplers or key phones; then smaller terminals with internal modems . Westlaw's terminal

2726-443: The principle of stare decisis – a system of legal precedents – to ensure the courts deliver consistent rulings on similar legal issues, regardless of the political or social status of the parties involved. As such, legal professionals must be certain that the legal citations they use to reinforce their arguments are accurate and still "good law." KeyCite leverages Westlaw technologies, West's attorney-authored case law headnotes and

2784-559: The result list even further. On the results page, users can also see links to related secondary sources relevant to their research. WestlawNext also provides folders for storing portions of the research selected by the user. The classic Westlaw.com platform was retired in August 2015. WestlawNext was renamed "Thomson Reuters Westlaw", effective in February 2016. KeyCite is a case citator used in United States legal research that provides

2842-479: The same computer. In 1990, Windows Help , which was introduced with Microsoft Windows 3.0 , had widespread use of hyperlinks to link different pages in a single help file together; in addition, it had a visually different kind of hyperlink that caused a popup help message to appear when clicked, usually to give definitions of terms introduced on the help page. The first widely used open protocol that included hyperlinks from any Internet site to any other Internet site

2900-581: The specific work needs of litigators, in-house corporate practitioners, and lawyers who specialize in any of over 150 legal topics. Most customers are attorneys or law students, but other individuals can also obtain accounts. Westlaw was created in 1975 by West Publishing , a company whose headquarters have been in Eagan, Minnesota , since 1992; West was acquired by the Thomson Corporation in 1996. Several of Thomson's law-related businesses outside

2958-662: The terms of the agreement were kept secret until they came out during discovery in the Matthew Bender / HyperLaw v. West lawsuit. In the mid-1990s, Alan Sugarman, who runs HyperLaw, sued West. The District Court in New York and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals held that West did not have copyright on the corrections it made on opinions or on the internal pagination . Computer-assisted legal research Too Many Requests If you report this error to

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3016-487: The use of "web dialogs", emulating the piling of open books on a table. Westmate was discontinued on June 30, 2007. West introduced WestlawNext on February 8, 2010. The main advances are that a user can start a search without first selecting a database, which is helpful because WestLaw has over 40,000 databases, and the search screen allows one to click checkboxes to select the jurisdiction and nature of material wanted. A new search algorithm, referred to as WestSearch, executes

3074-449: The user following the link. An inline link may display a modified version of the content; for instance, instead of an image, a thumbnail , low resolution preview , cropped section, or magnified section may be shown. The full content is then usually available on demand, as is the case with print publishing software – e.g., with an external link . This allows for smaller file sizes and quicker response to changes when

3132-497: The various skin elements. Text hyperlink. Hyperlink is embedded into a word or a phrase and makes this text clickable. Image hyperlink. Hyperlink is embedded into an image and makes this image clickable. Bookmark hyperlink. Hyperlink is embedded into a text or an image and takes visitors to another part of a web page. E-mail hyperlink. Hyperlink is embedded into e-mail address and allows visitors to send an e-mail message to this e-mail address. A fat link (also known as

3190-402: Was based on Borland C++ around 1997, and then changed to a program compiled on a Microsoft platform that incorporated portions of Internet Explorer . This was the first program to incorporate HTML ; prior to that, Westmate had "jumps" indicated by triangles instead of " links ." Shortly after that, both publishers started developing web browser interfaces, with Westlaw's being notable for

3248-478: Was directed by Hugh Lawford and Richard von Briesen, and the original code was based on an internal IBM text search project called INFORM/360. The IBM code turned out to be incomplete and required substantial modifications. In 1973, the project was commercialized in the form of a new company called QL Systems and a new product name, QL/SEARCH. In 1976, QL Systems licensed the QL/SEARCH software to West Publishing as

3306-417: Was known as WALT, for West Automatic Law Terminal. Around 1989, both started offering programs for personal computers that emulated the terminals, and when Internet access became available, an Internet address (such as westlaw.com) became an alternative that could be selected within the "Communications Setup" option in the client program, instead of a dial-up number. West's program was known as Westmate. It

3364-581: Was the Gopher protocol from 1991. It was soon eclipsed by HTML after the 1993 release of the Mosaic browser (which could handle Gopher links as well as HTML links). HTML's advantage was the ability to mix graphics, text, and hyperlinks, unlike Gopher, which just had menu-structured text and hyperlinks. While hyperlinking among webpages is an intrinsic feature of the web , some websites object to being linked by other websites; some have claimed that linking to them

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