Karen,
Document Author can be set under FILE, PROPERTIES, SUMMARY for
WORD and EXCEL. It can also be changed, however, you can also set a password for modification control and there is also a tracking function. (Under Tools, Track Changes)
But to answer your main question, (and I am no attorney) there is no substitute for a printed, dated and signed copy! Many companies are now using the "I accept" program function, such as for software licenses. In other words, if a person clicks the "I accept" option, the program allows them to continue, otherwise they are blocked from gaining further access. By default, then, if a person gains access to the subject matter, he must have agreed to the terms and conditions. This logic works well for licensing, but I am unsure it is applicable to patent law.
UPS, FEDX and many retail stores now accept digitized signatures as legal documents as witnessed by package receipt and credit card signatures via digitizer pads.
Of course if you contact an attorney, he will state the ONLY way to conduct business is to hire him to review all the fine print, produce much more fine print, cross reference the fine print and then hire him again to sue your neighbor when he does not read the all the fine print!
Let us know what you find out!
-Bob
-------------- Original message --------------
A client asked me this question, and I'm wondering if anyone
has run into this. They are in the Patents Department, and can
be called upon in court to "prove" that their people invented
something, etc. In the "olden days", there were notebooks.
Actual books with dated bound pages that their people wrote
in, and they were accepted as evidence.
But now alot of the people are creating Word documents or
Excel spreadsheets with notes of their "inventions." The Patents
people are concerned that these aren't good enough for legal
defense. I showed them how the File, Properties showed the
date created and the date modified but they aren't happy with
that because an innocent change could change the date modified
and there's no record of the original document. Also there is
an "author" indication on one of the tabs, but we have yet to figure
out where to set the author. Every document on every workstation
has the name of the company.
Anyone ever dealt with this? Feel free to reply to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
off the list.
Karen
