WIREdata, Inc. v. Village of Sussex

In 2001 WIREdata, Inc. (plaintiff), a subsidiary of the Multiple Listing Service, filed an open-records request with the Village of Sussex (the village) (defendant) seeking electronic copies of the real estate property records used by the village assessor to determine property assessments. The property records were created by the assessor’s inputting of raw data into a software program that the village licensed from a third party. The data was maintained within the software program, but the records contained within the program were utilized by the village assessor and were paid for with public funds. The village directed WIREdata to request the information directly from the software system’s third-party programmer, who informed WIREdata that it would need to pay a licensing fee in order to obtain the records in the format requested, notwithstanding the fact that the records were already available in the format WIREdata sought. WIREdata asserted that the village’s response was unacceptable and that the cost of the licensing fee far outweighed the actual cost of reproducing the requested records, in violation of Wisconsin’s open-records law. Consequently, WIREdata filed a mandamus action in district court asserting that the village had the obligation to produce the documents under the open-records law without WIREdata paying a third-party licensing fee. At the same time that WIREdata filed the mandamus action, the software developer filed for an injunction in federal district court in order to prevent the village from disclosing the records to WIREdata, citing copyright infringement. The district court denied the software developer’s injunction and held that the information sought by WIREdata did not violate copyright law. The village appealed.