February 2008 Issue
PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE & ETHICS CORNER
APEGGA members with professional practice or ethics questions are welcome to mail them to Ray Chopiuk, P.Eng., Director, Professional Practice, APEGGA, 1500 Scotia One, 10060 Jasper AVE NW, Edmonton, AB T5J 4A2; fax them to 780-426-1877; or e-mail them to rchopiuk@apegga.org.
Q
We recently completed an engineering/geoscience report for a client. The report has gone out as a PDF file and we have also provided paper copies. The client wants to use sections of our report, together with other information, in a submission they are preparing and are asking for our Word file. This presumably would make their job easier (they could just cut and paste).
I hesitate to do this because we would have no control over what they do with the report parts. I could, of course, request copies of what they send out. In addition, but probably not an issue here, the report could be used by competitors and just edited to suit their needs.
What is APEGGA’s view on this — the release of editable electronic copies of report documents?
A
For the purposes of discussion, we’ll assume that you fulfilled your professional obligations when you provided your report to the client. The question, then, is whether there is any further obligation to comply with the client’s request for an editable electronic version.
Essentially, the request could be regarded as not merely asking for your Word file but for permission to extract sections of your report and to use those sections in other documents that the client is preparing. The client is certainly capable of copying parts of your report without being given a Word file. Having the Word file just makes that task easier, as you suggested.
You’ve said that you are hesitant to give your client the Word file because you recognize that you would lose control over how the contents of the report might be used. That’s understandable. It is possible that portions may be taken out of context and, without the benefit of seeing the rest of the report, someone could come to a conclusion other than one you intended.
While your client is entitled to use your report in support of achieving some intended purpose (after all, that’s presumably why they retained you to prepare the report in the first place), unless you assigned your copyright in the report to the client, the client would not be entitled to “cut and paste” portions of it to create something new.
Of course, you cannot prevent anyone (client or competitor) from doing anything.
What you can do is make it clear how your report can, or cannot, be used.
Simply providing the client with an editable file might be seen as giving permission
to use the report as the client pleases, since that was the basis of the client’s
request. It would not be unreasonable for you to advise the client that cutting
and pasting sections of your report (by whatever means) is not acceptable for
the reasons that you mentioned, and that you cannot, therefore, provide the Word
file.
It’s not clear why including your full report would be inconvenient for the client.
The client could presumably include your complete report along with the other materials required for a submission and make reference to specific, relevant items in the report. While that may not be as easy for the client as they might like, your concern about protecting the integrity of your work should override a desire to please the client.
Your professional work, after all, belongs to you, not the client.
That’s not to say that you should never send an editable file to someone. You might have a section of a report that deals with a description of the history of the client’s facility or property, for example, based on a discussion with the client.
If you wanted to be sure the details are correct, you might send the client the Word file of that section and ask for corrections or comments on what you had drafted. Sending a draft copy of your full near-final report, however, might seem like an invitation to edit your professional work, opinions, conclusions and the like, and that would not be appropriate.