Olson v. West, Woodward & Garrity — Copyright Claims Over Jury-Attitude Report Used by January 6 Defense Attorneys Survive Dismissal

Background

Lindsay Olson is a Texas-based jury consultant who operates In Lux Research and Analytics. In April 2022, she produced a 27-page jury-attitude report for attorneys representing defendants in the Oath Keepers January 6 trial. The report concluded that Washington, D.C. jurors harbored bias against January 6 defendants and was filed on the public court docket in support of a motion to transfer venue. Olson was paid $30,000 for the report.

Three defense attorneys representing other January 6 defendants—Kira West, Stanley Woodward, and Paul Garrity—subsequently downloaded Olson’s report from the public PACER docket and filed it in its entirety as an exhibit to their own clients’ motions to transfer venue, without seeking Olson’s permission or paying a licensing fee. Every venue-transfer motion relying on the report was denied. In late 2025, Olson sued all three attorneys (and their firms) for copyright infringement, and the three cases were consolidated in April 2026.

The Court’s Holding

Judge Howell denied all three defendants’ motions to dismiss, rejecting five separate grounds for dismissal:

Statute of Limitations. The court adopted the discovery rule (when the plaintiff knew or should have known of the infringement) rather than the injury rule (when the infringement occurred), noting that every circuit to address the issue has applied the discovery rule to copyright claims. Because questions about when Olson should have discovered the infringement are fact-intensive, they cannot be resolved at the pleading stage.

Collateral Estoppel. A prior related case (In Lux Research v. Hull McGuire) involved a different report (the October 2022 update) and different factual circumstances. The defendants here, unlike the prior defendant Hull, never contracted with Olson and independently downloaded and filed the earlier April 2022 report.

Copyrightability. Olson’s copyright registration creates prima facie evidence of copyright validity, sufficient to survive a motion to dismiss.

Right to Access Judicial Records. The court held that placing a copyrighted work on a public docket does not destroy the copyright owner’s property interest. While defendants could have referenced, cited, or summarized the report, their wholesale reproduction and redistribution went beyond what the right of public access permits.

Fair Use. The court found that fair use analysis is premature at the motion-to-dismiss stage, as it involves disputed factual questions—particularly whether the attorneys’ use was commercial in nature and what market harm resulted. This followed the unanimous view of D.C. Circuit district courts that fair use is a “mixed question of law and fact” not suited for pre-discovery resolution.

Key Takeaways

• Public filing does not destroy copyright. A copyrighted document uploaded to PACER remains protected. Attorneys who download and refile it in other cases may face infringement claims.
• Fair use in litigation is not a given. Using a copyrighted work as a litigation exhibit does not automatically qualify as fair use, especially when the entire work is copied and the use arguably saves the defendant from paying the creator.
• The discovery rule governs copyright limitations. Though the D.C. Circuit has not yet formally decided the question, Judge Howell followed the unanimous weight of persuasive authority from all other circuits in applying the discovery rule.
• Practical risk for attorneys. Lawyers who routinely attach exhibits from other cases’ dockets should consider whether those documents may be copyrighted works requiring permission to reproduce.

Why It Matters

This ruling sits at a novel intersection of copyright law and criminal defense practice. The core question—whether defense attorneys can freely copy and refile a copyrighted expert report found on a public docket—has significant implications for legal practice. Every day, attorneys download exhibits, expert reports, and other documents from PACER and file them in their own cases. This decision signals that the mere public availability of a document does not strip its copyright protections, and that attorneys who reproduce entire copyrighted works in their filings may need to account for the creator’s intellectual property rights. The case will now proceed to discovery, where the fair use defense will be tested against a full factual record.