On 08/03/2008, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
of CAS numbers. But CAS has sued -- and I think successfully -- to discourage this, claiming either that they own the idea of a single master database of unique identifiers for chemical compounds, or that having a competing set of identifiers would sow confusion.
OH REALLY.
Yeah, I can see that playing well when publicised.
Whatever the legality of the situation, I'm betting Wikipedia isn't the first information service to have incurred CAS's wrath.
We haven't actually incurred their *wrath* as such.
But if they've actually sued people to try to maintain a monopoly on the *idea* of numerical identifiers, I think they've just incurred ours. Do you have details or pointers to such?
- d.