Technical and Professional Communication

Intellectual Property

Collaboratively authored by Fall 1996 students:

We, as the members of a course in Technical and Professional Communication, wish to express our standing on some of the issues concerning intellectual property. These issues can be broken down into the copyright interpretations of three main areas: readings and class handouts, publications on the World Wide Web, and email and other textual communications relating to our course.

Readings and class handouts:

• The distribution of copyrighted material is acceptable because we are using it solely for educational purposes and are not financially profiting from this act in any way.
• This material should always include information about its origin and/or author.

Publications on the World Wide Web:

• The copying of part of the format of an exhisting web page is permissible. No web page format should be copied in its entirety. The content of the page must be significanly changed.
• The context of a web page must be different from any that it is copied from so as not to exceed the realm of fair use by creating a competing site.

Email and other textual communications:

• It is assumed that any text written may be referenced accompanied by the author's name without notice.
• Exceptions to this can be made individually and by request.

We feel that the above guidelines are sufficient for most of what we encounter in our course. Of course, there are always exceptions. Any questionable issues should be looked into. This can be done by viewing on-line resources such as http://www.benedict.com/, consulting a style guide for proper referencing, or seeking professional assistance for more complicated copyright issues.

October 22, 1996