[HIB]IT pros: Lurking legal gotchas and how to avoid them

As an IT pro, you could get in legal trouble without even realizing it. You may be liable for civil damages, criminal fines, and/or jail time if, while doing your job, you intentionally or accidentally breach contracts or violate laws. It doesn't have to be criminal behavior; there are lots of noncriminal actions, called torts, that you can accidentally stumble over. This kind of inadvertent legal trouble actually happens to IT pros. For example, one client I represent in a copyright infringement case went to a construction site, measured the kitchen, then went back to his office and created a kitchen equipment drawing using AutoCAD. Sounds innocent, doesn't it? Yet he is now a defendant in a federal lawsuit, as is his employer for infringing the copyright of the architect, even though he made his own drawings rather than use the architect's drawings. In the United States, for better or worse, anybody can sue anyone else -- and they frequently do.

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