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I was taught Information Mapping when I worked for a company nearly ten
years ago. The company took the basics of IMI and revised it somewhat to
fit their corporate policies.
Later, when I was hired for a contract where there was no existing
documentation, I created a template for documentation that was even more of
a revision from IMI's standards in addition to other styles I had learned
during the intervening years. I was told by the company that they had
approached IMI once and were told that if IMI principles were followed in a
document (like block lines, chunking, the 7+/-2 rules, etc.) that they
would have to pay a royalty back to IMI.
I need to know if this is true so I won't accidently break any copyright
laws. At this point, many years have passed with me working contracts at
several firms, all with different documentation styles. I'm sure my
personal working template is very much removed from the original IMI
formats, even if I remembered exactly what those were.
You can contact me off line. I don't use anything like this in my current
position but I am working on a training manual at home in which I may have
to make extensive format revisions, if this statement on royalties is
true..
Kathy Frost
KFrost -at- BTSquared -dot- com
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