Re: copyright and full text materials

I would like to get some opinions on the legality of the following scenario.

A teaching hospital maintains a number of on-line full text and abstract databases of medical and scientific journals. A member of the medical staff decides to create a departmental database (why do I keep thinking Texaco?) for research purposes by periodically searching the databases provided by the hospital and downloading the results to her own computer. The researcher has the right to read, print and even save the material under the licensing contract. However, the researcher is creating a new entity, a searchable full text database devoted to her own area of research and wants to make it available on her departmental network or through an intranet to her colleagues within her department and in other departments. Is the hospital and/or researcher liable for the lost licensing fees?

(1) Is placing the material in an ongoing database different then just
printing it or downloading it to a disk which I assume the license would permit?

(2) Even if creating the database is allowed, if the researcher makes
her database available to other persons, isn't that a likely contract and copyright violation since she is copying the entire work and using it to create a derivative work. Her database would be more selective and does in some ways compete with the original even if it is not charged for.

(3) Does it make a difference if the other users of the database have
equal legal accessibility to the source database. This would mean that they could copy the articles themselves if they chose to without this researcher's intervention.

I know there are some representatives of database companies lurking out there. May I have your opinion too?

I just wanted some opinions.       

Thanks

Steven Melamut
melas[_at_]ils.unc.edu   Received on Tue Oct 21 1997 - 15:13:51 GMT