the dangers of cutting and pasting

The ABAJournal reports on a malpractice suit over claimed cut-and-paste work done on patent applications.  The client claims that patent application approval was delayed due to the inclusion of unrelated material from another client's filings.

Even if the material were boilerplate, as the law firm claims, this situation is a good real-life lesson for our students, who grapple with originality and ownership of the entire contents of their documents.  Taking refuge in the tried-and-true by cut-and-paste still requires care.

(njs)