Re: abstracts

From: Bernard Katz <bkatz[_at_]uoguelph.ca>
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2000 12:22:14 -0400 ()

On Tue, 4 Apr 2000, Peter Groves <peter.groves[_at_]virgin.net> wrote:
>
> I'd be interested to learn about the copyright treatment of abstracts of
> articles from scientific journals and conference proceedings elsewhere
> in the world. To start the ball rolling, in England an abstract would
> presumably be considered a copyright literary work provided of course it
> was original (in the usual limited sense of not copied). Given that an
> abstract will normally be a boiled-down version of the larger work, and
> contains mostly ideas and little expression, many abstracts might be
> excluded from copyright protection to begin with.
>
> However, by section 60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, it is
> not an infringement of copyright in an abstract (not defined) or in the
> abstracted article to sopy the abstract or to issue copies of it to the
> public, unless there is a certified licensing scheme in force covering
> the abstracts in question. (Whether there is such a scheme in force is
> another matter.)
>
> There is also the small matter of copyright in a collection of
> abstracts from a conference or a journal, in which copyright may
> subsist if (assuming it is a database) it is its author's own
> intellectual creation (unlikely, I think) or (not being a database but
> an ordinary garden variety compilation) it involved skill labour and
> judgment (which is more likely, but still not a foregone conclusion).
> There is also the sui generis database right, which might entitle the
> compiler of the database, if it had made a substantial investment in
> it, to stop unauthorised extraction or reutilisation of a substantial
> part of the database. So the use of a number of abstracts from a
> database or collection may infringe rights in the database or
> collection intself.
>
> Presumably, I can rely on the laws in other EC countries relating to
> databases being pretty similar, though I don't know what the state of
> implementation of the database directive is.

Peter Groves has asked some interesting questions, with perspective from the UK act. In my view (not a legal opinion), it is precisely *because as abstract is "a boiled-down version of the larger work" that it would be considered 'substantial' in terms of the Canadian act and protected. It does reproduce the ideas of the longer work, but it has its own form of expression -- how could it possibly contain only what Peter calls "little expression"? -- and often will take relevant phrases from the longer work. In my experience, in most instances it *is* the author(s) of the longer work who also writes the abstract. In Canada, to my knowledge we have no provision that excludes abstracts from protection as works, as the UK seems to grant.

Cheers,

Bernard Katz, Head, Special Collections and Library Development
McLaughlin Library, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON  Canada  N1G 2W1
         and Chair, Ontario Library Association Copyright Task Force

e-m: bkatz[_at_]uoguelph.ca // v: 519-824-4120, ext.2089 // fax: 519-824-6931

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Received on Wed Apr 05 2000 - 16:23:19 GMT