What makes a legal question &quot;hard&quot;? When someone says another person has a brilliant legal mind, I assume that means the person is well suited for hard legal questions. I think mathematicians and logicians have a systematic way of determining how hard their questions are. Is there a similar way of determining how hard a legal question is? From Computational Complexity Theory (Wikipedia): NP-hardness (non-deterministic polynomial-time hard), in computational complexity theory, is a class of problems that are, informally, &quot;at least as hard as the hardest problems in NP&quot;. More precisely, a problem H is NP-hard when every problem L in NP can be reduced in polynomial time to H.[1]:80 As a consequence, finding a polynomial algorithm to solve any NP-hard problem would give polynomial algorithms for all the problems in NP, which is unlikely as many of them are considered hard.[2] A common mistake is thinking that the NP in &quot;NP-hard&quot; stands for &quot;non-polynomial&quot;. Although it is widely suspected that there are no polynomial-time algorithms for NP-hard problems, this has never been proven. Moreover, the class NP also contains all problems which can be solved in polynomial time.
Questions of law can be hard when (among other things): the fact pattern has not been seen before (Bowman v. Monsanto), there is ambiguity in a statute (King v. Burwell), there is conflict between a statute and the constitution (United States v. Windsor), or there is apparently conflicting precedent (Campbell Ewald Co. v. Gomez).
The parties can be required under oath to explain what they understand the plain meaning of the words to be. Where they disagree about the plain meaning of the words, they can use expert witnesses to give weight to their interpretation. Once the judge determines the plain meaning of the words (either by agreement between the parties or by reference to expert witnesses or other evidence), it is a matter of standard contract interpretation. Even in the case of an idioticon, where no expert witnesses are available, if the disagreement between the parties surrounds only a few words, the judge could find that there is no actual ambiguity because the context. Also, the judge could refer to parole evidence if needed. The purpose of the written contract is to provide evidence of your agreement. It is a bad idea to create evidence that you both may want to rely upon at some point if nobody else can understand it.
In theory "legalese" is English: you will find every word in the dictionary, and the rules of grammar are exactly the same. However in practice it is true that legal documents are often written in a very specific style. There are a number of possible reasons for this: The document must say what it intends very precisely. Most regular language is quite sloppy and ambiguous, but lawyers share with computer programmers the need to ensure that what is said is precisely what is meant. A legal document exists within a legal system in which certain words or phrases carry very specific meanings. For instance in the UK the words "in trust" when talking about money or property will automatically import a huge body of law (and its also possible to have that law apply even if you don't use the magic words). Lawyers know about these things, and will write a document to either invoke or avoid those bodies of law as they see fit. Related to (2) above, laws and legal precedents give lists of things that must be done or proved. Legal documents will often follow these lists using the same terms in order to avoid future challenges. For instance US patent law specifies what must go into a patent application, so you had better follow the format and use the same subject headings. Within patents in particular, the patent office manual allows a patent to be rejected because of informal language that leaves the patent unclear. Patent lawyers and examiners have evolved an informal set of conventions about how things are said. If you use these conventions the examiner will have a much easier time understanding what you mean. Its not "cargo cult", more a specialised language. (Note: the following is about the US patent system, but similar considerations apply everywhere.) Lets take a look at an example patent picked at random: The abstract lists the key elements of the invention in very abstract terms, such as "vibrating mechanism" and "power source". If you were writing this in "informal" language you might mention a specific power source such as a battery. But doing so limits your invention: what if something other than a battery (such as a super-capacitor or spring-driven generator) is used? That would be a separate invention not covered by your patent. So patent lawyers take time to think and ask about generalisations. The next interesting part is the Claims. These set out precisely what is and is not covered by the invention. If the Claims don't cover it then its not in the patent. The format of each Claim is defined in 35 US 112, so if you don't do it like that it won't count. Finally we get to the Description. This is intended to explain the invention to "any person skilled in the art". It also needs to explain the prior art and show why the invention is new and useful, because those are statutory requirements. Much of this is in fact written in an ELI5 way, if the 5-year-old had swallowed a dictionary. The reason is that any little thing omitted or assumed can be used by a future challenger claiming that the hypothetical "person skilled in the art" would have failed to understand or know it. So lets take a sample paragraph from this patent (numbers refer to diagrams in the patent): The electrical connection 22 may include a circuit device that transforms a DC power provided by the power source 26 to AC power for the vibrating mechanism 28, which circuit devices are known to those having ordinary skill in the art of circuit design. This anticipates a possible variation on the invention and stops it being patented separately. It asserts that the "circuit devices" are known, so it doesn't need to describe them in detail. If that assertion wasn't there then someone might challenge the patent on that point, but since the assertion has been accepted by the patent examiner it is presumed to be correct. Note the "... ordinary skill in the art ..." phrase: this is explicitly calling out to the language in Title 35. You might imagine that such a variation would be obvious, and therefore not patentable. However it is very difficult for a court to decide in hindsight whether something would really be obvious to a person skilled in the art; you wind up with each side hiring expert witnesses who will give competing testimony as to whether it seems obvious to them. As a result the courts have set a very low bar to a claim that something is "non-obvious". The language used throughout a patent is of vital importance: infringement cases can hinge on the most trivial of linguistic issues. This blog post by a patent lawyer has a list of examples, including this one: For example, in Chef America, Inc. v. Lamb-Weston, Inc., Chef America tried to protect a cooking step for heating a dough at a certain temperature inside an oven. But Chef America drafted the claim to read “heating the . . . dough to a temperature in the range of about 400 degrees F. to 850 degrees F.” The Federal Circuit reasoned that “to” is not “at” and, thus, the claim required the dough (not the oven) to be heated to the specified temperature. The Court then ruled that the claim was not infringed. In fact, under the Court’s claim construction, this claim could not possibly be infringed unless one wanted to make burned dough. See also this case on "partially" not including "totally", and this post on why the word "disclosure" is now used instead of "invention". Patent lawyers call this kind of thing "patent profanity", i.e things you simply do not say. So if you don't use this kind of "legalese" in your patent the following things are much more likely: Your application will be rejected because the examiner cannot understand exactly what your invention consists of. Trivial variations on your invention will turn out not to be covered. Someone will challenge your patent on the grounds that you didn't explain everything that a "person skilled in the art" might need to know.
"Reasonableness" is meant to be vague, because what is reasonable in one case or contract or industry is not always reasonable in another. Generally, though, you'll probably find courts interpreting it to take into account normal practices in your geographic area, in your industry, and between you and the other party. If one party looks like they're trying to unjustly enrich themselves or is asking for something that people just don't agree to in the real world, it's probably going to be unreasonable. If people are asking for the fair value of their work on terms that are normally agreed to when they're the subject of negotiations, it's probably reasonable. Dropping the reasonableness language would probably leave the assigning party in a bad position, as they're not required to make the assignment, with no qualifications as to the terms. The assignee could argue that they're free to take the IP on any terms whatsoever, though courts often read in a reasonableness requirement anyway. This answer is based on U.S. law, but there will be probably be pretty strong parallels if you're in a common law jurisdiction.
I will assume that your question pertains to the United States. In other jurisdictions, different rules could apply. Context matters. The usual penalty for spoliation of evidence (the technical term for what you describe) in a civil case is a judicial determination or jury instruction that the evidence destroyed would have established the relevant part of the other side's case had it not been destroyed. In all of these cases, your failure to take affirmative action to preserve the evidence once you knew that there was a bona fide likelihood that you would be sued could be held against you by making an adverse determination that the evidence would have been unfavorable to you and possibly also money sanctions. You could not be held in contempt of court for this if these events happened before a case was commenced. In a criminal case, where you are a defendant, you have an absolute right to not incriminate yourself and do not have to take affirmative action to preserve evidence, although this right is limited to criminal cases and your failure to preserve evidence can still be held against you in a civil case. Certainly, in situation 4 you are a potential criminal defendant, so the 5th Amendment protection would apply. In situations 1 and 2, where the precautions were not put in place to facilitate a crime, the 5th Amendment would protect you if you were a potential criminal defendant, but suppose that you are a bystander like a third party ISP representative. If you were a third party, at a minimum you would have to be put on notice of the police need for the evidence, would probably have had to have had the police ask you for the evidence, and of course, would have to be aware that the destruction was imminent and have the power to prevent that destruction. If all those conditions were present, you might be guilty of obstruction of justice (there are precedents for inaction knowing of the consequences in the fact of a police question amounting to obstruction of justice). In situation 3, this kind of action pretty much amounts to being an accessory to some crime before the fact (unless someone was successfully deceived by a very elaborate story) and would likely make anyone involved part of a conspiracy to commit the crime that the destruction of the papers would facilitate. While the papers themselves might have been evidence of a crime or civil wrong, the destruction of the papers might itself be considered part of the crime, regardless of what could be established regarding the actual content of the papers.
Let me give you a simple, even if rather silly example: You take me to a civil court. You tell the judge "gnasher regularly parks his blue car in front of my home, and the color blue violates my sense of beauty. Judge, make him stop it. " A question of fact would be: Is my car actually blue? Not green, or red? And do I actually park my car in front of your home, and do so regularly? A question of law would be: Am I allowed by law to park my car in front of your home, even when my car has a color that you don't like? If this goes to a civil court, the judge would look at it and probably say: "Even if all the facts that 'Gimme the 401' claimed are true, as a matter of law there would be no case for gnasher to answer, since these actions would be permitted by law". If the judge decided that it is illegal to park cars in offensive colours in front of someone else's home as a matter of law, the court would then have to decide the facts: Whether what you claimed is actually the truth. (And while this example is silly, there have been people claiming that the neighbour's use of WiFi interfered with their health. And by law it is illegal to interfere with someone's health, so the facts would have to be examined).
I'm going to focus on one part of your question, because I think it is informative to the entire question: "By publishing those data in a copyrighted book are they now in the public domain?" Insofar as copyright is concerned, the "facts" are simply never copyrightable. What is copyrightable is the expression of the fact. So you publish a book and it contains many facts. You retain copyright over how you expressed the facts, meaning the word choice, format of presentation and so on. The discussion of this point always leads people to ask the following two questions: What if the "facts" are closely related to the way they are expressed? For example, a phonebook contains "facts" about phone numbers. The individual numbers are not subject to copyright. But if the way they were organized was clever (i.e. not merely alphabetical) the presentation may be copyrighted. Doesn't that line get blurred? Why doesn't "the presentation order" count as a "fact?" It does get blurred! And courts use nuanced case law and judgment to figure out which side of the line a given thing is. However, one backstop is that if AN EXPRESSION is so closely related to the IDEA BEING EXPRESSED that the IDEA cannot be otherwise expressed, then then the EXPRESSION is not subject to copyright protection. To answer your specific questions: The book is subject to copyright. The facts in the book are not. Someone else could publish a book with the same measurements so long as they are expressing the facts with sufficient difference from the original. I'm not familiar with CUSIP numbers. However, there are two things to say here. (A) it sounds like you are describing a contractual relationship between the people who have the numbers. This is not governed by copyright; it is governed by contract between the parties. If these numbers could be treated as a "trade secret" they might be protected IP in that way. But given that they are likely circulated at least a bit, they don't seem like candidates for "trade secret" protection. To your question, "what is the effect of one person leaking?" If "trade secret" law was doing any "work" here... then yes, the trade secret would be undone once the information was public. But like I said, its likely this is actually all about contracts not intellectual property protection. (B) The "facts" of "which number is associated with which instrument" is likely NOT subject to copyright at any time. The specific numbering code COULD BE copyrighted, but in reality is almost certainly TOO CLOSELY tied to the IDEA being expressed to be copyrighted. Could the number be expressed otherwise? If not, then its likely not protected by copyright. -- Big take away here: You seem to be confused about the concept of "facts" getting into the public domain. That's not exactly what copyright is about. Copyright would protect the expression of facts. An expression can become public domain if it is sufficiently old or if the creator designates it as public domain work. But simply "putting something out there" does nothing to alter the copyright status of the thing.
In any court, there will be situations where a judge has discretion to make some decision. The judge might have to decide "did X meet the burden of proof", and due to the situation two reasonable and competent judges could come to different conclusions. You couldn't blame either for the decision, even though they would make opposite decisions. On the other hand, a judge might make gross mistakes. The judge might decide "X met the burden of proof" when this is clearly a mistake. That's what the appellate court is interested in. An appellate court checks whether the judge made mistakes that a judge shouldn't make. So in this situation, the appellate court doesn't decide whether X met the burden of proof. The appellate judge decides "did the trial judge make a decision that a trial judge shouldn't have made". An appellate judge might think to himself or herself: "well, I would have decided differently, but this trial judge’s decision was one that a reasonable judge could have made", and if that is what he or she thinks, the original decision will stay intact.