This isn't meant to be a full answer. I think certain aspects of preparing a contract (how you arrange the clauses, maybe key turns of phrases, etc.) are probably copyrightable. However, two things occurred to me as arguing against a full copyright in any generic form contract.

Copyright has something called the idea/expression dichotomy, meaning you can protect the individual expression of an idea, but not the underlying idea. For instance, you probably can protect the specific wording in a clause releasing someone from liability, but you cannot prevent people from writing words that have the effect of releasing someone from liability. So it depends on what a person is attempting to claim copyright in.

Second, copyright only protects original expression. To the extent that a contract must contain certain words in order to have a certain legal effect, I don't think a person could get over the burden of proving that using such words is original expression. Only when you put some effort into creative authorship should you be allowed to assert copyright, and even then, only to the extent that you were creative.

I'm sure there is a much better answer to this, but the topic piqued my curiosity. There have been recent attempts to assert copyrights in court pleadings, resulting in lawsuits filed against Westlaw and Lexis. There, there is a lot better argument that the construction of court briefs contain original expression versus a contract.

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