copyright ? display of crystal structures from atomic coordinates

[Frank Oellien]

Michael Engel wrote:

> Hello
> a "copyright" question:
>
> Can I display crystal structures using atomic coordinates from publications
> on my webpage without the consent (but with citation) of the author ? Does
> it fall under "fair use" (sorry, don't know the exact term) ? What about
> very old papers (1930-50) ?
>

I think that there is no general copyright problem with coordinates.
However, I know that there are some cases where a copyright is possible or
necessary - 3D coordinates which were calculated by comercial programs! The
developers of such programs have a very big interest in protecting "their"
structures. But the main problem is that it is not possible today to find out
if a 3D structure file was calculated by a special program or not. Therefore
we have initiated a diploma thesis at our university with exact this topic.
The aim was the developing of a watermark method to add signatures to the 3D
file (very small manipulations on the coordinates).

Bye
Frank Oellien



--
Institute of Organic Chemistry, University of Erlangen-Nuernberg
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