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Subject:Copyright and legal liability From:Rahel Bailie <rbailie -at- CASTLETON -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 4 Jun 1998 11:40:44 -0700
I am documenting two hardware products which use software components
from other companies. I'd like to know how other techwriters handle this
in their documentation.
Situation A: A company has been contracted to provide us with certain
software. They hold joint copyright on the documentation describing the
code. Part of our agreement states that we will control the distribution
of the documentation. I now have to describe user commands, alarms,
statistics, etc. in our user documentation. Is there a standard
statement that is used for copyright? How do we protect ourselves from
liability if their documentation turns out to have an error? (Nothing is
life-threatening, but may cause the product not to work properly.)
Situation B: We use some software of another company in one of our
products. The software in our product is a subset of the software in one
of their products. For this reason, we don't want to refer customers to
their manuals (which would refer to functionality not in our product).
The company has given us the go-ahead to adapt their files in whatever
way we need to incorporate into our manuals (i.e. edit, put our logo on
it, etc.). Again, I can put a statement in the acknowledgements (is this
enough?) but what about on the pages themselves?
Please reply off-list, and I'll summarize the results for all. Thank
you.
-------------------------------------------------
Rahel A. Bailie, Technical Writer
Castleton Network Systems Corporation
Tel 604-293-0039 (5432) / Fax 604-293-0047 http://www.castleton.com
