Re: question

On Tue, 8 Sep 1998, Dan L. Burk <burkdanl[_at_]shu.edu> wrote:
>
> On 9/8/98, Beverly Bowles <bbowles[_at_]hshsl.umaryland.edu> wrote:
> >
> > An organization wants to make a CD-ROM containing their guidelines.
> > They want to attach a bibliography to the guidelines. They want the
> > user to be able to click on a citation and get the abstract to the
> > article. NOT the entire article.
> >
> > Is this going against copyright? The abstract of the article will
> > be gotten from medline.
>
> Hm. I assume that Medline abstracts are government works (written by
> someone at NIH?) and so are in the public domain.
>
> I tend to think that compiling the abstracts is not a problem. The
> Seinfeld case gives me slight pause, but I think it is distinguishable
> enough not to cause much worry.
>
> Maybe someone else here sees something I don't.

      Well, if an abstract is long enough, it may be a derivative work. However, if you write your own abstracts, and they are descriptive of the contents rather than summaries of the contents, then I think they may be used.

      However, from the description, it appears to me that they want to use published abstracts which could have been prepared by the author, the publisher or the online service. There is a good argument that these are also copyrighted.

Lolly

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