Subsidiary | |
Industry | Publishing |
Founded | 1977 |
Headquarters |
Dayton, Ohio United States |
Products | Caselaw, Articles, Publications, News, Court Documents, Lawyer Marketing, Law Practice Management Tools, Media Monitoring Tools, Supply Management Tools, Sales Intelligence Solutions, and Market Intelligence Tools |
Parent | RELX Group |
Website | Lexisnexis.com |
LexisNexis Group is a corporation providing computer-assisted legal research as well as business research and risk management services. During the 1970s, LexisNexis pioneered the electronic accessibility of legal and journalistic documents. As of 2006, the company has the world's largest electronic database for legal and public-records related information.
Currently a division of RELX Group (formerly Reed Elsevier), LexisNexis was first a product of the Mead Data Central company.
The Anglo-Dutch publishing company Reed Elsevier has owned LexisNexis and its predecessor company since 1994. At its inception in 1970, the database was named LEXIS by Mead Data Central (MDC), a subsidiary of the Mead Corporation. It was a continuation of an experiment organized by the Ohio State Bar in 1967.
On April 2, 1973, LEXIS launched publicly, offering full-text search in all Ohio and New York cases. In 1980, LEXIS completed its hand-keyed electronic archive of all U.S. federal and state cases. The NEXIS service, added that same year, gave journalists a searchable database of news articles. LexisNexis' world headquarters is located in Dayton, Ohio, United States. In 1989, MDC acquired the Michie Company, a legal publisher, from Macmillan.
When Toyota launched the Lexus line of luxury vehicles in 1987, Mead Data Central sued for trademark infringement on the grounds that consumers of upscale products (such as lawyers) would confuse "Lexus" with "Lexis". A market research survey asked consumers to identify the spoken word "Lexis". Survey results showed that a nominal number of people thought of the computerized legal search system; a similarly small number thought of Toyota's luxury car division. A judge ruled against Toyota, and the company appealed the decision. Mead lost on appeal in 1989 when the Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit held that there was little chance of consumer confusion. Today, the two companies have an amicable business relationship, and in 2002 implemented a joint promotion called "Win a Lexus on Lexis!"