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As someone pointed out earlier, there are both ethical and legal aspects to
deal with here. In terms of the legal copyright doctrine (in the U.S. at
least), it could be argued that the verbatim copying of the sentence from
one company's manual to another is a violation of copyright. Although such
cases frequently take into account the proportion of copied material to the
whole work (and in this case it seems like it's a very, very small
percentage), it's also possible to argue that even a small proportion was a
key element and should therefore be protected (this case was made
successfully in lawsuits against 2LiveCrew by Acuff-Rose Music [for "Pretty
Woman" riffs] and against The Nation by [I think] Random House [when The
Nation published an excerpt of Gerald Ford's memoirs containing the bit
where Ford decides to pardon Nixon]. Also, keep in mind that in the U.S.
people generally have the right to sue, so a company *could* decide to sue
even if they didn't have much of a case.
The more interesting issue is in terms of deciding what is ethical for a
technical writer. The question to answer would be, "Do you feel that you're
taking credit/profit from someone else's work unfairly?" If you really feel
that the passage you quote/copy is an elegant and unique solution to the
situation, then I would suggest that you *shouldn't* copy the text (and
instead come up with an alterative phrasing). After all, as technical
writers we have a vested interest in maintaining the value of an elegant
phrase or particularly effective arrangement of words.
Note that, like some other who have responded to this, I'm not certain that
the quoted sentence is necessarily the only and best way of addressing the
situation. Also, there clearly *are* cases where we draw on each other's
work without getting permission or even attributing that predecessor's
work--most of the technical writers I know learn many of their approaches
not just from textbooks and classes but also from observing and analyzing
good technical writing. There's no easy or universal answer to this
question, but a constant series of negotiations.
- Johndan
At 9:47 AM -0500 1.5.99, Debbie Figus wrote:
> Folks,
>
> I specifically meant the following scenario:
>
> You are glancing through another companyís manual.
> You read the following sentence:
>
> Our Company is interested in the applications
> you develop with our products, and we want to
> help if you have problems with them.
>
> Itís a nicely written sentence, says everything it
> needs to, and you were just about to work on the
> Customer Support section of your manual.
> Can you/would you use this sentence? Is there a
> legal element to copyright and a moral one for
> plagiarize? Would either of these obligate us
> to twist and turn it around so it's our own creation,
> even if that means it's not as pleasing a sentence?
>
>
> Debbie
- Johndan Johnson-Eilola
Director of Professional Writing
Department of English voice: 765.494.3772
Purdue University <mailto:johndan -at- purdue -dot- edu>
West Lafayette, IN 47907-1356 <http://tempest.english.purdue.edu>
