[consulting] copyright policies

[Laura Scott]

On Jan 25, 2008, at 1:43 AM, Ric Shreves wrote:

> Just a quick bit of insight: I used to practice law (ironically, given
> the current discussion, IP law!) and one of the complaints we always
> heard was why we, as lawyers, charged everyone the full price every
> single time we used what was essentially a boilerplate (template)
> document. No one in that field blinks an eye at re-using those
> documents to do the job. The view in that field is that the client is
> paying for their experience, their advice & counsel, and the execution
> of a task which the client is either unwilling or unable to do for
> themselves.

This actually raises a perfect analogy, I feel: You hire a lawyer to  
get you out of a traffic ticket. The lawyer does some nifty legal  
work and gets you off. Now you claim that the lawyer cannot do the  
same thing for anybody else -- that you now "own" that defense.  
Sounds silly in this context, doesn't it?

Or, to take it to a further extreme, you hire a lawyer to write up a  
contract for you. Then you claim you own the words in the contract  
and the lawyer cannot use those words in any other contract. The  
lawyer will just laugh.

Language and law are open source. ;)

Laura