TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:RE: Ethics, ownership of product, and suchlike From:John Posada <JPosada -at- book -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 19 Feb 2003 13:02:13 -0500
I think it depends under what conditions the original brochure was created.
There's a difference between these two scopes:
1) Create template and content to reflect our company's commitment
to....yadayadayada.
2) Produce brochure for X product.
Scope 1 shows they paid money for the development of the template in
addition to the rest of the production. The request would be wrong.
Scope 2 doesn't care about the components. For they know, you reused a
template from somewhere else. I don't know if it would be wrong to use the
same template again.
John Posada
Senior Technical Writer
Barnes&Noble.com
jposada -at- book -dot- com
NY: 212-414-6656
Dayton: 732-438-3372
-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Murrell [mailto:trmurrell -at- yahoo -dot- com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2003 12:57 PM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Re: Ethics, ownership of product, and suchlike
--- Bonnie Granat <bgranat -at- editors-writers -dot- info> wrote:
>
> The following sentence appeared in an e-mail that a prospective client
sent
> me:
>
> What we are really looking for is someone that may have already
> put together a brochure for another company and we want to use this as a
> template so as too save time and money.
>
> ----------------
>
> I responded that using a brochure created for another company is "usually
not
> done by professional writers." Am I mistaken about this?
I may be mistaken (but I don't think so <g>), but it seems we're talking
about
ownership of content vs. ownership of structure. I would expect that the
content of
a previously developed brochure would belong to the organization for which
it was
developed. However, the structure of such a brochure would not. That would
allow
this organization to borrow the structure of such a brochure and use it as a
template, as they suggest.
Buy or upgrade to RoboHelp X3 today and receive the WebHelp
Merge Module for FREE ($299 value). RoboHelp X3's all-new
features include conditional text, completely re-engineered
printed documentation output, Context-sensitive Help Toolkit,
single-source layouts, and more!
Order online today at http://www.ehelp.com/techwr-l
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as:
archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
