secured PDFs

Tue Mar 3 13:56:11 PST 2015

Yikes! Copyright and trademark, etc., is important – I have done internal presentations here to make sure that we are all careful about that. While it is rare for any manual information to be the basis of serious copyright legal cases, the consequences of such infringement could be harsh and fiscally troublesome.

The Legal Counsel inside a company (of any size) should be involved in any situation where these can arise. If your former friend had ever mentioned his approach to them, I am sure he would have been given way more than a sharp rap on his knuckles by competent legal counsel!

And, of course, if you are finding your verbiage and images are being used by competitors, the legal folks can (and should) send a cease-and-desist to start. Often, this is enough to solve the problem (i.e., “don’t file a lawsuit that costs money if you can cure it easily” mode of operation) – it is rare to see the Apple-Samsung type of cases, actually.

Z

From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Ken Poshedly
Sent: Tuesday, March 03, 2015 1:17 PM
To: john.x.posada at us.hsbc.com
Cc: framers at lists.frameusers.com; Johnson, Joyce
Subject: Re: secured PDFs

It's more a matter of our verbage and/or images being copied and used in the documentation by competitors.

As a tech writer for two world-known heavy equipment companies over the past 17 years, I know first-hand that it is not uncommon for former technicians and trainers to be put in front of a keyboard and terminal to produce manuals when they get "too old" to travel long distances or for extended periods for training or service duties. Their skills are valued far more than their ability to write coherent text.

They obviously know every thread-pitch, ampere and torque of all bolts and everything else, but proper writing skills and observance of copyright laws are TOTALLY foreign to many of them. That is exactly what happened when I worked alongside a former friend who had been a trainer for many years but then got into technical writing. Cutting and pasting stuff verbatim from competitors' manuals was totally what he did. When I told him our company could theoretically get sued out of existence, he brushed it off.

In the real world, I don't know if that kind of stuff (being sued for using plagiarized text and graphics in construction equipment manuals) actually matters, but my job -- the way I see it -- includes protecting my employer from this kind of stuff.

On Tuesday, March 3, 2015 4:00 PM, "john.x.posada at us.hsbc.com<mailto:john.x.posada at us.hsbc.com>" <john.x.posada at us.hsbc.com<mailto:john.x.posada at us.hsbc.com>> wrote:

Ken...just wondering...
If a customer buys your product, what do you care if they make changes?

John X Posada
AML Syst & Ops Supt Data Analyst | US FCC & RC Systems Control & Analytics
| HSBC North America Holdings Inc
330 Madison Ave., NY NY

_______________________________________________________________

Phone
      Int: 212-525-5483 Ext: Personal Cellphone - 732-259-2874
Fax
      Conference Bridge - 877-304-0052, Code 74809254
Email
      john.x.posada at us.hsbc.com<mailto:john.x.posada at us.hsbc.com>

_______________________________________________________________
Protect our environment - please only print this if you have
to!

From:    Ken Poshedly <poshedly at bellsouth.net<mailto:poshedly at bellsouth.net>>
To:    "tom.beiswenger at emhartglass.com<mailto:tom.beiswenger at emhartglass.com>"
            <tom.beiswenger at emhartglass.com<mailto:tom.beiswenger at emhartglass.com>>, "Johnson, Joyce"
            <JJohnson at abtg.com<mailto:JJohnson at abtg.com>>
Cc:    "framers at lists.frameusers.com<mailto:framers at lists.frameusers.com>" <framers at lists.frameusers.com<mailto:framers at lists.frameusers.com>>
Date:    03/03/2015 03:56 PM
Subject:    Re: secured PDFs
Sent by:    framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com<mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com>

In addition to hard-copies of our manuals included in the operator cab of
the heavy construction equipment my company manufactures and markets
worldwide, we also make available pdf files of our manuals with passwords
to prevent changes, copying text & images, etc.

So far, we're not aware of any plagiarism or other unauthorized use of our
stuff. At least not yet.

-- Ken in Atlanta

On Tuesday, March 3, 2015 3:33 PM, "tom.beiswenger at emhartglass.com<mailto:tom.beiswenger at emhartglass.com>"
<tom.beiswenger at emhartglass.com<mailto:tom.beiswenger at emhartglass.com>> wrote:

We used to deliver user guides as secured PDFs; however, the security
settings in Acrobat 9 never fully suited our needs. We have since upgraded
to Acrobat 12, but I haven't checked if the settings are any better. That
said, securing the documents ended up being more pain than it was worth.
Too many users wanted to extract pages or do other things that we deemed
were OK. We dropped the securing documents years ago. I know there is fear
that someone could steal some trade secret (I never found one in our
manuals), but as long as you are distributing a document in either PDF or
print, you have to assume that sooner or later your competition will
manage to get a copy.

As far as protecting ourselves from someone modifying our documentation in
a way that could expose us to liability for machine damage or personal
injury, we cover ourselves (per the lawyers) by including disclaimers in
the preface and noting that the documentation always remains our
proprietary property and cannot be altered or duplicated without our
permission. I'm sure that doesn't stop anyone, but the legal folks say
that if a customer violates that clause, they place themselves at risk
through no fault of ours.

Tom Beiswenger
Manager, Technical & Training Documentation, Project Manager - Inspection
Business
Emhart Glass Mfg. Inc.
1140 Sullivan St.
Elmira, NY 14901
PH: +607 735-4279
FX: +607 734-8278
Mobile: +607 769-4779
Email: tom.beiswenger at emhartglass.com<mailto:tom.beiswenger at emhartglass.com>

From:        "Johnson, Joyce" <JJohnson at abtg.com<mailto:JJohnson at abtg.com>>
To:        "framers at lists.frameusers.com<mailto:framers at lists.frameusers.com>" <framers at lists.frameusers.com<mailto:framers at lists.frameusers.com>>
Date:        03/03/2015 03:14 PM
Subject:        secured PDFs
Sent by:        framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com<mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com>

We deliver user guides (software and hardware) to customers  via
password-protected pdfs, loaded onto servers and also posted on our
customer web portal.

I’m wondering how members of this group deliver customer-facing documents.
Do you use pdfs? If so, do you secure those pdfs? If you secure them, how
do you accommodate in-house colleagues who request unsecured pdfs so they
can extract pages and images?

Thanks in advance for your responses.

Joyce

Joyce M. Johnson
AmerisourceBergen
Lead Technical Writer
Technology Group

1400 Busch Parkway
Buffalo Grove, IL 60089

847.808.5875
888.537.3102 ext 15875

www.abtg.com<http://www.abtg.com>

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