The next time you pick up that cease and desist letter to copy it and reproduce it for your use to stop other sites from copying your content, take care! You might be violating copyright, as crazy as that may sound.

In October 2007, a lawyer claimed that the cease and desist letters originating from his office were copyrighted. Nobody had the right to copy them without his permission. It seems the lawyer has taken his job of stopping copying of content a little too seriously.

An advocacy group, Public Citizen, however, argued that the lawyer’s claim is not in harmony with the First Amendment of the Constitution. It seems though that the judge who looked after this claim agreed with the lawyer. According to a recent press release, the fines for copying a cease and desist letter without permission may cost up to 1 million dollars. Incredible!

Whatever the lawyer is up to, the judge seemed to put him on the right side of the law. Websites now have two things to take care of-that they do not copy content from elsewhere in the web, and that they do not copy cease and desist letters from any lawyer, unless they want to spend one million dollars.

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