You can argue that until you are blue in the face. They've got a law firm and large budget, we've got a laywer who is already very busy. The American Chemical Society has stated the following terms for the use of CAS Registry Numbers:
http://www.cas.org/legal/infopolicy.html
A User or Organization may include, without a license and without paying a
fee, up to 10,000 CAS Registry Numbers or CASRNs in a catalog, website, or other product for which there is no charge. *The following attribution should be referenced or appear with the use of each CASRN: CAS Registry Number(R) is a Registered Trademark of the American Chemical Society*. CAS recommends the verification of the CASRNs through CAS Client ServicesSM.
A User who makes a legal copy of CAS information must make a reasonable
effort to prevent the theft or inadvertent illicit dissemination of CAS intellectual property by displaying the following ACS Copyright Notice conspicuously at least once on each packet of information distributed by the User: Copyright Year by the American Chemical Society. All Rights Reserved. (Use the year of publication in the case of printed and microform services; in the case of information derived from an online service, use either the year provided by the online service or the current year.) For usage exceeding or outside these restrictions, please refer to Section V. Special Permission http://www.cas.org/legal/infopolicy.html#special.
Furthermore:
IV. Unauthorized Use of CAS Information
All of the following uses are prohibited without prior written permission from CAS:
- A User may not disseminate, distribute, copy, or store any
portion of the CA Lexicon, without the prior written consent of CAS. The CA Lexicon is the copyrighted intellectual property of the American Chemical Society and is provided to assist in searching Databases on STN. 2. A User may not copy or otherwise record all or portions of a printed issue or Database with the purpose of, or the effect of, avoiding subscription fees or use charges for that publication or Database, except as provided in these Policies. This includes the creation of centralized or networked Databases or directories of CAS information. 3. CAS Records or Metadata may not be used in Data Mining with non-CAS or non-STN tools unless the User or Information Professional has downloaded the records via STN AnaVist. For uses of CAS Information outside of this procedure the User or Information Professional must contact CAS. 4. A User may not use automated programs for systematic retrieval of CAS content to create or compile, directly or indirectly a collection, compilation, database or directory. An example of automated retrieval is a script written to extract and download CAS data in batches. 5. A User may not redistribute any part of CAS Records or any CAS Data Elements outside the Organization via the Internet or other means except as specified in these Policies. 6. A government agency which receives legally required CAS information from a User may not share, exchange, or redistribute this information to another Organization, including another government agency.
I suggest that we remove all CAS Registry Numbers from Wikipedia. They are
not Free. The ACS has been generous, *so far,* to politely say as much to us.
On Sat, Mar 8, 2008 at 10:46 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 3/8/2008 7:58:30 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu writes:
One can also argue the opposite case; that collection of facts are copyrightable, that Wikipedia, a project whose goal is to give every person >>