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Subject:FW: Copyright and legal liability From:Rahel Bailie <rbailie -at- CASTLETON -dot- COM> Date:Mon, 8 Jun 1998 17:08:02 -0700
Some techwhirlers have asked me to summarize the replies to the email
below, but as no one provided me with feedback, there is no summary.
Rahel
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rahel Bailie
> Sent: Thursday, June 04, 1998 11:41 AM
> To: Techwhirlers (E-mail)
> Subject: Copyright and legal liability
>
>
> I am documenting two hardware products which use software components
> from other companies. I'd like to know how other techwriters handle
> this in their documentation.
>
> Situation A: A company has been contracted to provide us with certain
> software. They hold joint copyright on the documentation describing
> the code. Part of our agreement states that we will control the
> distribution of the documentation. I now have to describe user
> commands, alarms, statistics, etc. in our user documentation. Is there
> a standard statement that is used for copyright? How do we protect
> ourselves from liability if their documentation turns out to have an
> error? (Nothing is life-threatening, but may cause the product not to
> work properly.)
>
> Situation B: We use some software of another company in one of our
> products. The software in our product is a subset of the software in
> one of their products. For this reason, we don't want to refer
> customers to their manuals (which would refer to functionality not in
> our product). The company has given us the go-ahead to adapt their
> files in whatever way we need to incorporate into our manuals (i.e.
> edit, put our logo on it, etc.). Again, I can put a statement in the
> acknowledgements (is this enough?) but what about on the pages
> themselves?
>
>
> Please reply off-list, and I'll summarize the results for all. Thank
> you.
>
> -------------------------------------------------
> Rahel A. Bailie, Technical Writer
> Castleton Network Systems Corporation
> Tel 604-293-0039 (5432) / Fax 604-293-0047
>http://www.castleton.com
>
