TIME.com: Rule No. 1: Don’t Copy — May 15, 2006 — Page 1
How did that happen to Swanson and his collection of folksy phrasings and spot-on aphorisms, which was first published in 2004 and given out free to Raytheon employees before it found a wide and enthusiastic audience that included Warren Buffett and Jack Welch? Credit goes to Carl Durrenberger, a San Diego engineer, who was packing up his cubicle at Hewlett-Packard to move to another division when he came across a copy of a 1944 chestnut given him by a former boss: The Unwritten Laws of Engineering by W.J. King.He flipped through it, smiling at the dated language. Days later, he read a USA Today article online about Swanson and his rules. A memory flashed. He swiveled his chair to a box he had yet to unpack and fished out the King manual. Looking at the article and the manual side by side, Durrenberger, 29, was “flabbergasted” to note that 16 of Swanson’s 33 rules were in fact King’s–rusty lingo and all. “Bill Swanson of Raytheon is a plagiarist!” Durrenberger blasted on his blog.