John Todd [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > It is my understanding, at least in the United States, that it is not > possible to copyright contracts. Thus, if someone has a contract you > like, you may use it. (I am not a lawyer. Use my advice at your > peril.) Using someone else's blood-mon... er, lawyer's fees, seems > like a wise business decision if you're content with the result of a > non-customized contract. > In the UK, which may be different from other countries, any published work is automatically covered by copyright. You don't need to apply for copyright protection and there are no exceptions. This being the case (in the UK) a contact's text would be covered by copyright law.
It should also be noted that contracts have been written and published for so long that a lot of the original copyright protections will have expired. Also, a lot of "standard" contract text is available from the public domain. That still doesn't give people the right to copy a contract verbatim; Some of the clauses may end up looking similar but one cannot simply copy an entire body of text and just replace the company name. It should also be pointed out that a "terms of service" document is usually not a contract. The contract may stipulate that the TOS must be adhered to, and that the TOS may change from time to time, but the actual TOS is usually a separate entity to any actual contract between a service provider and its customer. If the USA has some sort of weird copyright exemption for contracts then that will probably not cover the TOS document nor any other document referenced in the contract. -- _/ _/ _/_/_/_/ _/ _/ _/_/_/ _/ _/ _/_/_/ _/_/ _/ _/ _/ _/_/ _/ K e v i n W a l s h _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/_/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] _/ _/ _/_/_/_/ _/ _/_/_/ _/ _/ _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
