How to redraw if a drawing have legal limitations ?

[Kabelsalat]

Hi.

Not sure if heading make sense, here is the full explanation:
At work, I have oversight over several facilities that is remote controlled. Some of those are dated back to the 70's, and changes are done since then.

I do have the wiring diagram for those units (in paper format), and I'm capable to reproduce those drawings using cad software in order to keep them updated and correct so that any physical changes are also being visible on the drawings.

The potential problem is: On the drawing, it is stated a legal piece of text that prohibits the drawing to get in hand to a third party and being altered because the drawings belongs to the company that assembled the facility. This company still exists today.

I assume most of you guys are located in the US somewhere, while I'm located in Europe, and therefore there may be differences in law system, but I want to think this issue is pretty much the same regardless of location.

The question is: What does it takes for me to be able to keep the drawings updated without putting the company I work for in risc of any law suit? Let say this was in the US or UK just for argument sake.

Here is some ideas I'd thaught out:

• Keep the drawing ID number and content (and changes of course) but stripping away all information about the origin of the drawing (I bet this is the worst thing to do).
• Keep all non-technical information, including the list of previous changes, original author, and just add another line that summarize the changes.
• Or something between. Maybe draw all the technical and just refering to the original drawing and it's author (list of previous changes strips away).

And yes, I've asked the company if they want to update the drawings, but it's very hard to materialize, most because the company doesn't have overview of all changes that is done since the facility was new. This is also a bad idea because I find errors "all the time" that make it neccesary to make corrections to the drawings, so it make sense that I changes the drawings myself.


What do you guys think about this ?

 

[Martaine2005]

The potential problem is: On the drawing, it is stated a legal piece of text that prohibits the drawing to get in hand to a third party and being altered because the drawings belongs to the company that assembled the facility. This company still exists today.

There is the problem, providing they have the rights over the description.
If you change or improve, you could be aiding their design. Seek legal advice. Or change it to a completely different updated design explaing how the patented design is/was flawed.

Martin

 

[Alec_t]

As said, seek legal advice. The actual wording could be important. For example, the restriction might (albeit unlikely) apply only to the original drawings and not to any version of your own creation. Copyright law can be tricky and does vary between jurisdictions.

 

[Kabelsalat]

The actual wording I think will be difficult to replicate here since the document are not written in English. I can see if I find a similar drawing from another company that is written in english, then I'll quickly see if the wording are identical or not.

My personal taught is that since the company I work for has bought and paid for the facility (and documentation included), it should be fair game of making our own copies of those documents. This of course is just my opinion.

But thank you for advice, I think I know who to ask for legal advice

 

[Kabelsalat]

Found another (unrelated) drawing that have same text written in English:

WE RESERVE ALL RIGHTS IN THIS DOCUMENT AND IN THE INFORMATION CONTAINED THEREIN. REPRODUCTION, USE OR DISCLOSURE TO THIRD PARTIES WITHOUT EXPESS AUTHORITY IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN

 

[WHONOES]

Surely if your company has purchased the rights including all documentation to the equipment concerned then you should be able to, as the owner, redraw diagrams for your purpose at your convenience.

 

[MAB_1]

Just don't hand your drawings over to a third party vendor as warning in post #5 says.

 

[Kabelsalat]

Just don't hand your drawings over to a third party vendor as warning in post #5 says.

Sure, that won't happens

 

[TCSC47]

Just opinionating here. I would hope that the company would use common sense and allow you to redraw their documents if you needed them for using their equipment. I would hope that they would only get twitchy if you passed off their work as yours. Me personally, I would use any diagrams and information from outside my works if it was pertinent to the internal documents I had to write.

What are the risks? Speaking about the UK, I remember Warwick University French Dept. way back in the 70's getting a large fine (and Named and Shamed!) for photocopying too much literature for their teaching. You are allowed to copy up to 10% of a book. However, this was about the University making profit from the literature and not having to pay the authors. I can not remember who brought the prosecution. I think this is a bit different from the OP's situation though.

I co-authored a physics UK school text book back in the 1990's and our publisher Simon and Schuster, told us we could simply take diagrams from other text books and redraw them for our book and as long as we changed one small thing, it was OK. An amusing game you can play is to look at school text books and try and trace the lineage of the diagrams. For 1980 onward science books, you might find a lot of the diagrams look suspiciously like those from prolific school text book author Tom Duncan. ( Name checking him assuages my conscience somewhat) Again I don't really think this is relevant to the OP's situation.

Then you have to consider what your bosses want of you. In procrastinating about updating these documents you may be costing them time and money. They may be quite happy for you to take a risk if it means the job gets done.

 

[TCSC47]

-----Then you have to consider what your bosses want of you. In procrastinating about updating these documents you may be costing them time and money. They may be quite happy for you to take a risk if it means the job gets done.

Lol! Just re-read my post. Of course your bosses may be happy for YOU to take the risk. I suppose it may be different if they have to take the risk!

 

[Kabelsalat]

Lol! Yes, it would be the business that is running the actual risc, not me