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

Sat Mar 8 15:13:24 UTC 2008

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?

- d.