[WikiEN-l] CAS Discourages Using SciFinder to Help Curate Wikipedia

[geni]

On 08/03/2008, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/murrayrust/?p=997
>
>  They have a specific hate-on for Wikipedia:
>
>  "Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) objects to anyone encouraging the
>  use of SciFinder - and STN - to curate third-party databases or
>  chemical substance collections, including the one found in Wikipedia."
>
>  The claim is that "CAS numbers are copyright CAS/ACS who have the
>  legal right to regulate their use - as above." I find this idea highly
>  dubious myself, though I wonder what countries it would legally fly
>  in. Particularly given that "CAS identifiers have come to be accepted
>  as a primary identifier system for chemistry."
>
>  Anyone here have informed legal commentary?
>
>  Also (and this is why I've posted it to foundation-l) - anyone
>  interested in a bit of organisational outreach to work out what can be
>  done about this?


That isn't hate. That is fear. The amount of money in large chemistry
databases is significant. Wikipedia doesn't threaten that yet but has
the potential to so do.

The copyright claim is hard to judge. A horrible mixture of database
rights and more conventional copyright so yeah any legal commentary is
going to need to be seriously informed.

In terms of open alternatives I supose the IUPAC systematic naming
scheme would be closest but that is slightly problematical since it
doesn't always produce consistent results.

-- 
geni