ACS Sues Google Over Use of 'Scholar'

headisdead writes "John Batelle is noting that 'The American Chemical Society yesterday filed a complaint against Google, claiming the new Google Scholar infringes on its own product, called SciFinder Scholar.' Fairly typical subscription vs. free dispute, but with intellectual property issues thrown in for good measure."

Re:Lindows?

[tomhudson]

Er, "Windows"??? We've been all over this before with Lindows. Google should have known better.

Bzzt! Wrong. Microsoft paid $20 million for Lindows to walk away. They are deathly afraid of a judgment that would set a precedent that Windows is a generic term.

Don't take my word for it ... http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/win dows/story/0,10801,94634,00.html [computerworld.com]

Or is this link biased because I got it by googling the following: 'lindows name change microsoft paid'?

Re:Isn't Scholar a generic word?

[ScrewMaster]

Maybe ... but given that courts seem to give idiots, deadbeats and outright criminal cartels a big win at least 30% of the time, they have decent odds of winning (justice notwithstanding.)

Re:Scholar = a common word, an not even the full n

[kfg]

Next, Coca-Cola will sue Pepsi Cola over the use of the word Cola.

They can't. They already did, and settled. Previous to that suit Coca-Cola made dozens of competing products either change their name or put them out of business.

KFG

Re:Funny?

[tomhudson]

Try again. You can call any dictionary "Webster's". The trademark protection on the term "Webster's" in connection to dictionaries expired LONG ago.

What currently exists is the ability of ANY publisher to take the term "Webster's", and combine it with their own name, or another term, and THAT term is a trademark, and enjoys trademark protection.

In other words, you can produce a "Y3K Webster's Dictionary", a "Fuck You Webster's Dictionary", or any other combo that no one else currently enjoys trademark protection on.

As to the contents, you'll find that only the unique parts in your "copyrighted" dictionary are covered by copyright - the actual list of words and their definitions aren't. That's why most dictionaries include "extra material" - so that they can actually put a copyright notice in the book.

*banging head against a wall*

[TheHonestTruth]

Jebus cripes! Copyright != Trademark. Completely different rights and standards apply. They are not even the same area of IP. GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

-truth

Re:Funny?

[tomhudson]

Works consisting entirely of information that is common property and containing no original authorship (for example: standard calendars, height and weight charts, tape measures and rulers, and lists or tables taken from public documents or other common sources)

As such, the portions of dictionary contents that are not sufficiently unique (contain little or no authorship value) are NOT copyrightable. Changing the font or page size isn't a copyrightable act of authorship.

All current dictionaries have relied upon other "common sources", including other dictionaries. Again, not copyrightable.

I think you are thinking of the "compilations being copyrightable" area, but this only applies if the compilation is more than just a collection of facts. Dictionaries don't meet this standard. Encyclopedias (at least most of them) do.

SciFinder

[Bester]

As a user of SciFinder Scholar I really don't think that ACS should be trying to draw a comparison between their product and google's scholar.

SciFinder is terrible. The UI is non-consistent with the standard windows suite, cf to google's wonderful UI. SciFinder is also ugly as a dog (a pug at that).
It's slow as a dog, cf to google's speed.
Tell it to save to results and all you get is unprintable ascii characters.
Performing a search is painful task with poor boolean support.

On the whole scifinder is poor product that I hope is supersceded with google's scholar.

--
A Commentary on 'The Hare and the Tortise' In reality the hare would have beaten the pants off the tortise in a race, rarely does slow and steady win the race. Instead it is the fast hare capable of the leaps and bounds of modern thinking that will win the race. This fable is told to encourage fat stupid children.

Current User of both Scifinder Scholar and Google

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been a user of Scifinder Scholar 2003-2004 for the past 3 years. It works pretty well for chemical structure and keyword searching for my chemical research. Our institution only has 5 user licenses, so for a large research institution it is a pain to keep logging off to share resources and is not conducive to my research needs. This is where "web of science" (another really good subscription literature search site) and Google Scholar come in to the equation. At our university the leased ip address information grants full text permissions to all e-journals in the schools subscription list. So, the job of finding relevant literature abstracts has been greatly simplified with the new Google site. I commend the researchers at Google for creating this outstanding product. I hope it helps to release the stranglehold imposed by the major scientific journal publishers on the advancement of an open access journal publication system.