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Subject:Royalties on Information Mapping? From:geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA Date:Mon, 4 Aug 1997 12:24:28 -0500
Kathleen Frost <<...created a template for documentation
that was... a revision from IMI's [Information Mapping]
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.>>
That would be like me trying to copyright the paragraph as
a conceptual structure and subsequently asking all writers
to pay me royalties whenever they wrote paragraphs. If you
copy a template exactly from an IMI manual, then you're
definitely violating their copyright if you don't obtain
permission, just as you'd be violating my copyright if you
published this e-mail under your own name; if you use the
principles they taught you to design your own template,
then your actions are perfectly legitimate.
--Geoff Hart @8^{)} geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Disclaimer: Speaking for myself, not FERIC.
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