copyright

This page sets out what is protected, what you are free to do, and what we will act on. It is written plainly on purpose: most people who read it are customers wondering what they may do with their own documents, and the answer to that is generous.

What we claim

Copyright in the following subsists automatically under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) and is owned by the operator of The Last Step, ABN 42 961 240 633:

• the software that runs this site and the wizard, including its source code, its structure and its interface;
• the clause library — the wording of the orders the tool assembles, and the arrangement, selection and sequencing of those clauses;
• the questions, explanations, guidance and warnings shown as you work through the tool;
• the filing instructions, the requisitions guidance and the other written sheets included in a pack; and
• the text, layout and design of this website.

Registration is not required in Australia and there is none to point at. Copyright exists from the moment a work is written, and ours is dated and recorded.

What we do not claim

We claim nothing in the Court's own forms. The Application for Consent Orders, the proposed orders template and the Court's published material belong to the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia and are used as the Court publishes them. We claim nothing in the Family Law Act 1975, the Rules, or any other legislation, and nothing in the ordinary legal concepts a consent order deals with. Nobody owns the idea of an indemnity, and we do not pretend to.

Standard legal phrasing that has been in common use in Australian consent orders for decades is not claimed as ours. What is protected is our particular expression: the specific wording we have written, and the way the clauses are selected, arranged and combined.

What you may do with your own documents

Your licence covers your matter. It does not extend to using our documents as a template to prepare orders for other people, whether for a fee or otherwise.

The mediator resources

The paragraph above is about the documents the tool produces for your own matter. The free resources we publish for mediators are different, and deliberately so: the disclosure pack and the settlement workbook at thelaststep.com.au/mediator-resources exist to be used with other people's matters, and the pack is unbranded on purpose so that a mediator can make it their own.

If you run financial mediations, you may use them in your practice, put your name and branding on them, translate them, and hand the printed pages to the parties. That permission is free, non-exclusive, and we can withdraw it. You do not have to credit us.

You may not sell them, charge for them as a product in their own right, or take them apart to build a competing tool or kit. The wording, the checks and the clause reasoning inside them remain ours, and the licence above does not turn them into yours.

What you may not do

• Copy, extract or reproduce the clause library, in whole or in substantial part, for use in another product, service or document kit.
• Copy the software, or any substantial part of it, including by inspecting what your browser has downloaded.
• Reverse engineer, decompile or attempt to derive the document-generation engine, or circumvent the controls that decide when it is provided.
• Use automated means to collect the site's content, or to obtain the tool's questions, guidance or clause wording in bulk.
• Reproduce the website's text or design on another site.
• Use our name, wordmark or get-up in a way that suggests an association, endorsement or authorship that does not exist.

Purchasing a matter buys you a completed set of documents for that matter. It does not buy a licence to the library that produced them.

Fair dealing, and honest criticism

The Copyright Act permits fair dealing for purposes including criticism, review, reporting news, research and study. We do not attempt to restrict it and would not want to. Quote us, review us, compare us with anything you like, and say what you think. Take a screenshot for an article. Cite a clause in a paper about self-service legal software. None of that is what this page is about.

How we detect and what we do

Copies leave traces. Our source is dated and hashed, our clause library is versioned, and material we deliver carries markers that identify the delivery it came from. We audit for reproductions of our wording, and a copy of our library is identifiable as ours whether or not our name is attached to it.

Where we find infringement we generally write first, plainly, and give a reasonable opportunity to take the material down. Copyright infringement in Australia is actionable, and remedies can include injunctions, damages or an account of profits. We would much rather send an email than a letter of demand, and we have no interest in chasing people who are quoting us fairly or discussing what we do.

If you think we have infringed yours

Tell us and we will look at it properly. Use the contact form. Identify the material, tell us where it appears in our product, and tell us what you say your rights are. If you are right we will fix it, and we would rather hear from you than from your lawyer.

Trade marks

“The Last Step” and our wordmark are used as trade marks in Australia in connection with this service. We assert rights in them under trade mark law and the Australian Consumer Law provisions dealing with misleading conduct and passing off, whether or not registration has been obtained.

Contact

Copyright and licensing enquiries: the contact form. Please do not use the support form for these; it goes to a different queue.