Professional Ethics and Plagiarizing Partners

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It has recently come out that my boss knowingly plagiarized a curriculum that is available for sale- it's unlikely that she did this herself, rather, I believe that she directed an Intern to reformat the curriculum-- but it now has our companys logo on it and in all the meetings where this curriculum was discussed it was attributed to the intern who was directed to reformat it.

Now my boss has sent me an email with materials developed by a partner/potential partner with the instructions to develop a curriculum 'based on' these materials-- which don't appear to have been sent to her (based on the email) with the understanding that we would use the materials to design our own program-- I'm feeling like it's in bad faith for me to use their materials to design a program of our own-- especially because we are supposedly partners (and can't they administer a program like this for us?) and because of the prior popularization issue.

What's the line between professionally unethical, unfriendly competition, and violation of intellectual property laws?

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@liminalia,

I would ask (maybe the boss is unaware or at least is playing it that way), e. g. "This looks like a curriculum I saw here. Do we have permission to use this?"

That's a straightforward question right there. And see whether she sweeps it under the rug or blames the intern (that's often what happens, particularly if the intern has left the company) or says something like, "Damn, we shouldn't do that. We need to rethink everything."

Of course you want the latter, but at least that will give you an idea of the future, and whether you want to continue in that environment.

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