Re:Talk about skirting the issue (Score 2)

If you claim trade secret you can not claim copyright. A copyright work must be published or be intended for publication, i.e.: a work in progress. By requiring an NDA you assert trade secret. Once a trade secret is public then the documents may be copyrighted. Do not forget that the formal, and if you want really strong protections in copyright the best, method of copyright is to send the work to the Library of Congress where it will be cataloged and made available to the public for analysis. The second best is to place a copyright statement on the work. This only works if the document is distributed in a public, but not necessarly free, manner. The last form is informal copyright which is the protection personal corrspondence, etc. gets. A trade secret is not a work to be distrubted in a public manner and thus not subject to copyright.