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Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

Copying legal documents isn't illegal, and in fact many lawyers will just run a search & replace on an existing client's T&C to generate a new T&C. This is also how T&C generator websites work. It's actually recommended, as then you have standardized language that is all well-defined in the eyes of the courts.

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You are going to have to do a better job of backing that claim up. It certainly seems to be an obvious breach of intellectual property law at the very least. Citing that some lawyers do this does not automatically make it legal.

My initial claim is perhaps a bit too strong. Case law is basically that the unique portions of a T&C or other contract are protected by copyright law, but boilerplate terms that have appeared in lots of different firms' documents are considered public domain.

http://pub.bna.com/ptcj/1051462Jan11.pdf

GDPR-shield's original T&C was actually copied from ShareKit, which is another product from the same company:

https://www.sharekit.io/terms

But going paragraph by paragraph down the terms, you get this list of companies, all with the same language:

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Except+for+certain+kinds+...

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22You+must+be+at+least+%5B1...

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22To+access+most+features+o...

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22The+Service+will+require+...

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22may+seek+pre-authorizatio...

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22The+Service+may+include+a...

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22may%20suspend%20or%20term...

That's only through section 4, but so far every clause is legal boilerplate except for the first paragraph of section 4, which is unique to ShareKit (and ThreadRadar, another product by the same entrepreneur).

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