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Am I wrong, though, in thinking that a clean-room recreation of the Zotero code that parses .ens files would be legal (although the use of ISI-provided .ens files would still be, at best, questionable)? If so, I'd like to encourage everyone who might be interested in working on such a project to *not* look at any Zotero code. At all. If this holds up and the offending code is removed, anyone re-engineering it would need to have never been in contact with the original code. Or (as I started with), am I wrong? On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 12:38 PM, Edward M. Corrado <[log in to unmask]>wrote: > Klein, Michael wrote: > >> Edward M. Corrado wrote: >> >> >> >>> This will be interesting to see how it works out. From what I read, it >>> looks like the case that Thomson has is based on, or at least strongly >>> enhanced by, the EULA. Thus, the legal questions may end up being 1) is >>> "freeing" data from a proprietary file format aviolation of >>> copyright/patent/ etc.? and if not, 2) can you sign that away by >>> agreeing to an EULA? >>> >>> >> >> Two points: >> >> First, it's my understanding that contract law trumps basic civil law in >> almost all cases. Unless you can convince a court that you entered into >> the >> contract under duress, or that the part of the contract in question is a >> violation of a basic unabridgeable right (this last being the reason a lot >> of employment contract non-compete clauses are unenforceable in several >> right-to-work states), you're bound by it. I think you'd be hard pressed >> to >> argue that reverse engineering is a Basic Right Of Humankind. Unless...The >> First Amendment guarantees the Right of Assembly. Can we extrapolate that >> and argue for a Right of Disassembly? ;-) >> >> Second, this isn't a EULA in the sense of "By opening this package, you >> agree..." or "By clicking this, you agree..." Those kinds of contracts >> are >> questionable. It's an actual contract granting GMU a site license for the >> Endnote software, negotiated by Thomson and GMU and agreed to in writing >> on >> both sides. >> >> > > This is a very good point. > > I'll be disappointed if Thomson Reuters prevails on this one, but I won't >> be >> surprised, either, based on my own (admittedly limited) understanding. >> >> >> > Same here. If it wasn't for the EULA I'd probably think differently. > > Edward > -- Bill Dueber Library Systems Programmer University of Michigan Library