Comments on: John Wilbanks on the Erosion of the Public Domain http://www.chemspider.com/blog/john-wilbanks-on-the-erosion-of-the-public-domain.html Building Community for Chemists Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:07:05 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.2 By: Cameron Neylon http://www.chemspider.com/blog/john-wilbanks-on-the-erosion-of-the-public-domain.html/comment-page-1#comment-38616 Cameron Neylon Thu, 15 May 2008 19:50:36 +0000 http://www.chemspider.com/blog/?p=512#comment-38616 Without wishing to be circual I suspect the legal definition is probably 'facts of nature that do not involve a creative act' and are therefore in the public domain. A structure (e.g. a crystal structure) is data, but the representation of it may not be. A wikipedia page is content. The 'facts' on it are data. But I'm no lawyer and I don't think there is clear case law, and if there is it probably differs from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Which in the end is why the SC position is to suggest that people remove doubt by declaring everything to be in the public domain. If you can't, or don't want to, do that then it appears to get very messy very fast. I believe one scientific publisher has claimed that an NMR spectra off the instrument was content (can't lay my hands on the example but I don't think I made that up) but this seems untenable. But a well done drawing of a chemical structure might well be. Shades of grey and a great big pot of money for the lawyers. Without wishing to be circual I suspect the legal definition is probably ‘facts of nature that do not involve a creative act’ and are therefore in the public domain. A structure (e.g. a crystal structure) is data, but the representation of it may not be. A wikipedia page is content. The ‘facts’ on it are data. But I’m no lawyer and I don’t think there is clear case law, and if there is it probably differs from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

Which in the end is why the SC position is to suggest that people remove doubt by declaring everything to be in the public domain. If you can’t, or don’t want to, do that then it appears to get very messy very fast. I believe one scientific publisher has claimed that an NMR spectra off the instrument was content (can’t lay my hands on the example but I don’t think I made that up) but this seems untenable. But a well done drawing of a chemical structure might well be. Shades of grey and a great big pot of money for the lawyers.

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