BREAKING NEWS: Bloggers prevail in Apple v. Bloggers case

The Court of Appeal (Sixth Appellate District) just moments ago handed down its opinion in O'Grady v. Superior Court, ___ Cal.App.4th ___ (May 26, 2006). I've only had a couple of moments to quickly skim the opinion, and the following language jumps out at footnote 21:

[W]e have avoided the term “blog” here because of its rapidly evolving and currently amorphous meaning. It was apparently derived from “we blog,” a whimsical deconstruction of “weblog,” a compounding of “web log,” which originally described a kind of online public diary in which an early web user would provide links to, and commentary on, interesting Web sites he or she had discovered. (See Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia (as of May 23, 2006).) The term may now be applied to any Web site sharing some of the characteristics of these early journals. (See ibid.) It is at least arguable that PowerPage and Apple Insider, by virtue of their multiple staff members and other factors, are less properly considered blogs than they are “e-magazines,” “ezines,” or “webzines.” (See Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia (as of May 23, 2006) [“A distinguishing characteristic from blogs is that webzines bypass the strict adherence to the reverse-chronological format; the front page is mostly clickable headlines and is laid out either manually on a periodic basis, or automatically based on the story type.”].) However, the meanings ultimately to be given these neologisms, as well as their prospects for survival, remain unsettled.

I wonder if this is the first court to cite Wikipedia. UPDATE: Joe Gratz has more on the court's citations to Wikipedia.

Comments

[Shaun Martin]

Nah, this isn't the first. Wikipedia has been cited over a dozen times; indeed, one of the first couple of citations was way back in 2004, in an unpublished opinion by Justice Sills. (The first, I believe, was a published 11th Circuit opinion, which beat out Justice Sills by a couple of months.)

[Kimberly]

Thanks, Shaun. I knew someone out there with free Westlaw could check it. Sounds like this may be the first published California Court of Appeal opinion to cite Wikipedia.