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I am writing a business plan and am wondering whether plagiarism is a relevant issue. Business plans are not published documents, do not necessarily have "signed" authors, and do not purport to offer original ideas. So long as claims and data are appropriately cited, does one still have to rewrite sentences and/or directly place quotation marks around relevant material form other sources? Thanks |
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In the US, plagiarism is not against the law. But copyright violation is. In general, if a document has not been placed explicitly in the public domain by its creator, then it is protected by copyright. So are derivative works, such as you might get by rewriting sentences. Statutory damage awards alone can be substantial. I assume the rules are similar in Spain. Sometimes, the copyright holder does not choose to sue. In which case you're fine. Of course, I'm not a lawyer. I don't even play one on TV. |
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First, while you don't publish a business plan, you may be showing it to other people. So you should make sure that information taken from other sources is referenced. That being said, it is not a published paper, so you aren't going to be held to the same standards as an academic paper. So reference your sources, make sure you don't pass off other people's material as your own, and you should be ok. |
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Joe is correct that all text is inherently copyrighted in the US, and furthermore you can remove all doubt with a simple "(c) 2010 Your Name Here" in the footer. However this doesn't protect you in any important way because you cannot copyright ideas. So someone can steal your business plan and so long as they use different words, it's not a copyright violation. |
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