4 ms·

No, that's nonsense. I don't know if there's a special exemption in the US but contracts and policies can be and absolutely are under copyright. Individual clau

by hnbad 3y ago

No, that's nonsense. I don't know if there's a special exemption in the US but contracts and policies can be and absolutely are under copyright. Individual clauses might not be but the contract in its entirety likely meets the threshold of originality required for it to not simply be considered a plain collection of facts. The similarity between standard contracts does make it harder to demonstrate a copyright violation based on the text alone though.

withinboredom 3y ago
So, you’re saying only one company in the history of the world can install garages, or every company that wants to install garages must pay that company or ensure that it’s contracts are distinctly different so they don’t get sued? That sounds absurd. What country is this?
- thephyber 3y ago
  That’s not what your parent said and you jumped a lot of logical steps to get where you did. No form of intellectual property applies to “in the history of the world” — all IPs expire their monopoly protections after a period of time. And yes, contracts must be distinctly different from copyrighted contracts. [1] Just because computers and the internet allow copy-paste of content with no effort does not mean it is necessarily legal. [1] https://www.upcounsel.com/are-contracts-copyrighted#using-someone-else-s-contract-is-it-legal https://www.upcounsel.com/are-contracts-copyrighted#using-so...
  - withinboredom 3y ago
    I’m not sure what “logical steps” I jumped. All you have to do is prove someone else is selling garages and they stole your copyright in a violation of derivative work. It’s absurd to think copyrights can be be applied to contracts. It’s a hill I’d be willing to die on if someone sued me for it.
    - hnbad 3y ago
      I don't understand how you make the leap from "if copyright can apply to legal documents it can also apply to arbitrary physical objects". Doubling down on ignorance seems like a bad way to learn new things but you do you. Heck, this is very easy to google: https://www.quora.com/If-you-ask-a-lawyer-to-draft-a-contract-can-the-lawyer-really-own-the-copyright?share=1 https://www.quora.com/If-you-ask-a-lawyer-to-draft-a-contrac... https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/24521/are-the-individual-terms-of-a-contract-copyrighted https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/24521/are-the-indivi... https://www.upcounsel.com/are-contracts-copyrighted https://www.upcounsel.com/are-contracts-copyrighted Contracts are text and text is subject to copyright. You seem to be confused about the difference between copyright, patents and trademarks though. That copyright applies to contracts does not mean it's possible for two different lawyers to end up writing almost identical contracts. It instead means it's very difficult to demonstrate copyright infringement based on the text alone. But if you simply copy a contract verbatim that you demonstrably had access to and can't demonstrate how you arrived at the exact same wording (e.g. if you're a layperson and have never written a contract before), it's probably an easy case for the copyright holder to win. This will apparently blow your mind but in some jurisdictions outside the US such as the EU, mere collections of facts ("databases") are also protected by copyright: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right Note that this does not mean you can't collect the same facts, it just means you can't harvest them from an existing collection and reproduce them the same way. So you couldn't just publish your own knock-off white pages phone book but you could publish a phone book as long as it is not sourced from an existing one. Please remember: this does not apply in US copyright law.
      - withinboredom 3y ago
        > I don't understand how you make the leap from "if copyright can apply to legal documents it can also apply to arbitrary physical objects". You can replace "garage" with whatever you want. Basically, if I'm a contractor I can sue every other contractor for uncreative derivative works. If I'm installing garages, I can sue my competitors. If I'm selling software, I can sue my competitors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work Even if it doesn't succeed 100% of the time, there is a non-zero chance people will settle. There's a non-zero chance that I can prevent other people from creating businesses in my market by simply writing every potential variation of some common contract elements. That's why this is absurd that contracts can be copyrighted. You can argue that you'd have to prove intent, but people do that every day with news stories and win (I have a reporter friend that has been sued multiple times for 'copying stories' that they themselves wrote -- they win most of the time. In one case, I was sitting right beside him on the train while he wrote the story from his interview notes. The 'plaintive' tends to create a verbatim story on the web and change the publish date to some date in the past, then 'proves' they wrote it first. They don't win, but they do cause stories to be 'redacted' until it can be proven one way or the other. By then though, the news is old news.)

by hnbad 3y ago

withinboredom 3y ago

So, you’re saying only one company in the history of the world can install garages, or every company that wants to install garages must pay that company or ensure that it’s contracts are distinctly different so they don’t get sued? That sounds absurd. What country is this?

thephyber 3y ago
That’s not what your parent said and you jumped a lot of logical steps to get where you did. No form of intellectual property applies to “in the history of the world” — all IPs expire their monopoly protections after a period of time. And yes, contracts must be distinctly different from copyrighted contracts. [1] Just because computers and the internet allow copy-paste of content with no effort does not mean it is necessarily legal. [1] https://www.upcounsel.com/are-contracts-copyrighted#using-someone-else-s-contract-is-it-legal https://www.upcounsel.com/are-contracts-copyrighted#using-so...
- withinboredom 3y ago
  I’m not sure what “logical steps” I jumped. All you have to do is prove someone else is selling garages and they stole your copyright in a violation of derivative work. It’s absurd to think copyrights can be be applied to contracts. It’s a hill I’d be willing to die on if someone sued me for it.
  - hnbad 3y ago
    I don't understand how you make the leap from "if copyright can apply to legal documents it can also apply to arbitrary physical objects". Doubling down on ignorance seems like a bad way to learn new things but you do you. Heck, this is very easy to google: https://www.quora.com/If-you-ask-a-lawyer-to-draft-a-contract-can-the-lawyer-really-own-the-copyright?share=1 https://www.quora.com/If-you-ask-a-lawyer-to-draft-a-contrac... https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/24521/are-the-individual-terms-of-a-contract-copyrighted https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/24521/are-the-indivi... https://www.upcounsel.com/are-contracts-copyrighted https://www.upcounsel.com/are-contracts-copyrighted Contracts are text and text is subject to copyright. You seem to be confused about the difference between copyright, patents and trademarks though. That copyright applies to contracts does not mean it's possible for two different lawyers to end up writing almost identical contracts. It instead means it's very difficult to demonstrate copyright infringement based on the text alone. But if you simply copy a contract verbatim that you demonstrably had access to and can't demonstrate how you arrived at the exact same wording (e.g. if you're a layperson and have never written a contract before), it's probably an easy case for the copyright holder to win. This will apparently blow your mind but in some jurisdictions outside the US such as the EU, mere collections of facts ("databases") are also protected by copyright: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right Note that this does not mean you can't collect the same facts, it just means you can't harvest them from an existing collection and reproduce them the same way. So you couldn't just publish your own knock-off white pages phone book but you could publish a phone book as long as it is not sourced from an existing one. Please remember: this does not apply in US copyright law.
    - withinboredom 3y ago
      > I don't understand how you make the leap from "if copyright can apply to legal documents it can also apply to arbitrary physical objects". You can replace "garage" with whatever you want. Basically, if I'm a contractor I can sue every other contractor for uncreative derivative works. If I'm installing garages, I can sue my competitors. If I'm selling software, I can sue my competitors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work Even if it doesn't succeed 100% of the time, there is a non-zero chance people will settle. There's a non-zero chance that I can prevent other people from creating businesses in my market by simply writing every potential variation of some common contract elements. That's why this is absurd that contracts can be copyrighted. You can argue that you'd have to prove intent, but people do that every day with news stories and win (I have a reporter friend that has been sued multiple times for 'copying stories' that they themselves wrote -- they win most of the time. In one case, I was sitting right beside him on the train while he wrote the story from his interview notes. The 'plaintive' tends to create a verbatim story on the web and change the publish date to some date in the past, then 'proves' they wrote it first. They don't win, but they do cause stories to be 'redacted' until it can be proven one way or the other. By then though, the news is old news.)