Subject: Re: why we aren't using lisp (was New to Lisp)
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 1999/06/21
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3138976885172325@naggum.no>

* Erik Naggum
| did you know that agreements (in the legal profession) are not copyright?
| how can lawyers make money when the results of their work aren't theirs
| to control?

* Kent M Pitman <pitman@world.std.com>
| I'd like to see a cite to law for this to believe it true.

  there's no law that says this.  you might think of the technical legal
  definition of inalienable copyright unless otherwise relinquished, but
  there is no meaningful difference between a theoretical Bern-style,
  intrinsic copyright that is never invoked and a non-existing copyright.

  the situation is this: lawyers do not affix their agreements with either
  the name of the author or any other information that could aid in the
  discovery of the intrinsic copyright holder

| I don't recall seeing any exception in the IP law for contracts to not be
| copyrightable.

  they are copyrightable, all right, they just aren't copyrighted.

| If you buy those EZ-forms from office supply stores, they're copyrighted.

  they they're making a business out of selling the text, and it makes a
  lot of sense to copyright it.  never signed an EZ-form contract when I
  took on a contract for a client, however.  usually, we're talking about
  pages and pages of custom text.  since I have myself exploited the fact
  that I can't get sued by a previous client for using the formulations in
  a contract (other than to break confidientiality clauses, but that's
  beside the point), I also fail to see what _purpose_ a copyright could
  have had.

#:Erik
-- 
@1999-07-22T00:37:33Z -- pi billion seconds since the turn of the century