Think Computer Foundation v. Free Law Project

Think Computer Foundation sued the Free Law Project in small claims court for the return of a $5,000 donation from 2014 that was conditioned upon proper recognition and involvement with the RECAP court document transparency project. Free Law Project Director Mike Lissner never completed the planned Internet Explorer version of the RECAP plug-in, removed functionality from the existing Firefox plug-in, and in 2017 unilaterally cut off access to RECAP metadata unless bulk users agreed to pay an arbitrary, undisclosed, unwritten price—something that might have been avoided had Think Computer Foundation been involved on an ongoing basis. In 2019, Lissner publicly and falsely stated, "PlainSite refuses to support us at any level," ignoring $15,000 in total contributions to the RECAP project, $10,000 of which were additionally matched by Princeton University. The sudden revocation of access to RECAP contributed to another site's decision to shut down. The Free Law Project refused several attempts to settle the dispute. Ultimately, Judge Karin Schwartz decided that the written contract did not explicitly require the Free Law Project to make the law available for free.