Legal Question in Intellectual Property in Michigan

Re: Use of published material by a consultant

The question is whether or not you have infringed the copyright of the publisher. In order to answer this, an intellectual property attorney would have to analyze how similar your form is to the material in the book and, potentially, the author's form.

Re: Use of published material by a consultant

You can take a short-cut to a lot of legal action and inquire about using the form from the publisher. Once you get a release (it can't cost that much). Then, you can use it without worry.

If you don't want to pay for it, then you'll have to change a fair amount of it to avoid a probable finding of infringement. There's nothing wrong with using it for inspiration, but you can't take a significant part of it and publish that information to third parties. Of course, you can use it for yourself, the problem only comes when you use it outside of fair use. Profit-making is usually outside of fair use.

If you consult an attorney, I would make the form your own as much as possible, then simply get a legal opinion as to whether or not your version is likely to infringe. It's not like trademark or other intellectgual proerty, because ideas can't be copywritten, only the form of the publication.