"product" as non-manufactured

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

In a message dated 2/8/2000 6:13:48 AM, jeclapp at WANS.NET writes:

<< When I was practicing law in the
mid-eighties I encountered the term (in the sense Roly is asking about)
only in corporate business plans and the like >>

I'm not a lawyer, but I have been doing legal consulting for 15 years. My
memory is that, from the beginning, attorneys have spoken of the special
rights that they have to what they term (I believe) "work product,"--i.e.,
materials that the attorneys themselves have generated in pursuing their
case. This is, then, not exactly "product" in the sense of something material
for sale or even something for sale at all, but it is a sort of abstract use
of "product" that it strikes me (too) could have been the source of the
business abstract sense of "product."

Maybe. My memory of the death of James Dean is certainly more vivid. Or of
King Farouk.