copyrighted descriptions

[Julian Humphries]

>not sure. If in doubt, a simple note to the author or
>publisher of the original description will solve the

Several important notes.  Today most scientific publications
are copyrighted by societies or publishers, not authors.  I
would be very surprised if any copyright inquiry, to say,
Academic Press, wasn't routinely returned with a form
requiring payment.

Second, despite the obviousness to us of what the
copyright law says, the principal of fair use (thats how
we are able to use the content of copyrighted works in
other contexts), has evolved over the years and is being
slowly eroded.   I wouldn't bank on previous interpretations
by anybody but an IP lawyer.

Third, the whole ballgame is about to change.  Intellectual
property protection is a very active area of national and
international law.  The biggest pushers of very restrictive
copyright/database/IP protection are, not surprisingly,
publishers.   AAAS, CODATA, and others are out there on
the battleground as we speak trying to head off what  might
amount to a deadly threat to our traditional exchange of
scientific information (and names).  The just passed
"Digital Millennium Copyright Act" has yet be be analyzed,
but see: http://www.dfc.org/issues/wipo/sen824/sen824.html
for threats posed by this summers version of that bill.  I believe
the worst of the threatened components were deleted before
passage but we all need to see details of what passed.

 It is very possible that a scientific paper published and
stored in an electronic form might carry significant restrictions
on reuse of the *content* of that paper.  Yes, that could include
names (or descriptions or diagnoses).  If you wanted to publish
a checklist of the fishes of Mexico, and a recently published
paper included three new species, their names, etc, it is entirely
possible the publisher might require payment before you could
"reuse" the content of that description.   Under most version of
proposed legislation scientific papers are a "collection of information"
and covered by the legislation.

Details at:

http://www.eff.org/pub/Intellectual_property/WIPO/
http://www.eff.org/pub/Intellectual_property/HTML/ip-overview.html
http://www.aaas.org/SPP/DSPP/CSTC/bulletin/articles/9-97/WIPO.HTM
http://www.aaas.org/SPP/DSPP/SFRL/PROJECTS/DATABASE/gore.htm
http://www.arl.org/info/frn/copy/db_update.html

and

http://www.eff.org/pub/Intellectual_property/WIPO/eff_wipo_19961122.comments
for a comment on an earlier version of proposed legislation (that would
have definitely
made "facts" copyrightable.).  Note this stuff is already law in Europe, so
papers
published in Europe are already covered by these restrictions.

Julian Humphries