Have some questions that have come up within my team around the ethical and professional obligations in receiving, transmitting, and turning over CAD and other engineering documentation.
I'm Engineering Manager for a design/build contractor - we put together industrial process plants and systems, most times building the systems we design but sometimes performing design work only. In the course of this work, we handle existing customer drawings, third-party vendor drawings, and our own self-generated drawings.
This entire issue has come to light upon finding that some external parties are presenting our drawings and standard drawing symbols / style as their own work.
We are looking to put together a Document Use Policy, and these are the highlights I have started:
- When modifying third-party drawings, always include their title block to give credit and rev-cloud changes
- When modifying customer drawings, always include original title blocks to give credit and rev-cloud changes
- When modifications include our own design information and CAD symbols / styles, release only PDFs. (The property paid for is the end result drawing, not the raw CAD file)
- When modifications include no proprietary information of ours (we performed drafting only using the drawing's existing CAD standards, no design), release DWGs
- Add language to contracts that bind the reuse of released CAD works within governed boundaries (our "written consent" statement and logo right now are on the title blocks, but those can be deleted)
- When asked to reuse third-party drawings by a customer to produce a new design for them to sell to a new end-user, which the third-party is not aware of, turn this down. Redraw applicable elements from scratch, and release only PDF.
- When asked to convert a third-party PDF into a DWG and modify, turn this down.
- Discovery of our generated drawing styles and symbols being used by others as their own work should be treated as breach of propriety
- Discovery of our generated designs and systems being used by others as their own work should be treated as breach of propriety
- Release PDFs of all other work produced in the course of a project - schedules, inventories, etc - to include company logo
My questions are this: what type of CAD Document Release Policy do you have in place? Is it written from an ethical, legal, or other perspective? And what are the highlights covered that help mitigate the gray areas of credit, propriety, and use rights?
Another angle: where is the "free to use" line drawn between performing drafting work vs design, as in, is it ethical to modify others' drawings when drafting only, but unethical when reusing their information for a new design of your own?
Thank you in advance!