Re: copyright of pleadings

How about moving into another two common areas of lawyers lifting freely from others - contracts and wills & trusts. The form books are copyrighted - but use is licensed. But what of all those forms which one copies from others - those cleverly phrased paragraphs, that better structure and sequencing of a contract?

Are these protected or protectable? Ought they to be?

It seems we get to the merger sort of problem quite quickly. That is, there may be a very limited number of ways to say something effectively and concisely, though an unlimited number of ways of saying things badly (as in many form books). While the better phrasing is more valuable, does it lose protection because it is better? Sort of like software - the closer to an ideal efficiency the software code gets, the less it is expression and the more it is just the embodiment of the idea.

If I see a contract which puts the remedy limitations and warranty disclaimers together rather than in different sections and I decide this is a superior structure, do I infringe when I do that in my next contract? Or is the putting these two things together an unprotectable idea as opposed to SSO expression?

I would think that this, like pleadings, would pretty much come down to no one bothering to sue unless someone were copying it for publication in a book or on the net or something. And so I suppose it is mostly just the sort of thing us law professors are concerned about more than most real lawyers.

Should we carve out an exception for legally operative documents?

Cheers,
Steve Jamar
Howard Law
<sjamar[_at_]aol.com> Received on Mon Apr 22 1996 - 23:50:35 GMT