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You need to refer your friend to the legal department of your company. First of
all if you wrote the document for in-house use, more than likely the company
you work for owns the manual and they have the final decision on whether or not
the other company can use the manual you wrote.
If you take this issue into your own hands, you and your friend could be fired
for selling proprietary information.
Paula Puffer
papuffer -at- psquareddoc -dot- com
-----Original Message-----
From: Anonymous User [SMTP:anonfwd -at- RAYCOMM -dot- COM]
Sent: Saturday, April 03, 1999 4:49 AM
Subject: FWD: Reselling existing corporate work
Name withheld upon request. Please reply on list.
*************************************************
"I got an email from someone who works for the same company at a different
location, where they've been using an Outlook manual that I developed for
in-house use. A friend of hers, at another company in that city, has asked
her to ask me if the other company could have the electronic version of the
manual, so that they could use it in their Outlook rollout.
"Am I pleased? Yes. Would I like this other company to pay my company
something for the file, rather than just giving it to them? Yes. But I don't
know how to think about setting a price.
"What experience do others have with this kind of situation? Don't some
contracting groups in fact have generic templates of manuals that can be
customized to suit each of several client companies? (But wouldn't you then
also provide the client with a refined list of styles, and instructions for
making specific kinds of customizations, etc.? which I don't have time to do
for this manual.)
"I'm thinking that we'd have to have them sign some kind of simple
agreement, stating that they would not resell this file to yet other people,
and that we would or wouldn't provide any ongoing support concerning how its
styles and frames work. Are those the important points? Are there others?
"Some additional information:
- The manual is a 54-page Word 7 file.
- Either they or we would have some work to do, replacing our logo and all
specific references to our company and its procedures with their own info.
"Thanks in advance for all comments and suggestions."
