Digital Rights Network

Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), a subsidiary of the American Chemical Society (founded 1909), is unhappy because the Federal Government has funded an open scientific database called PubChem that *might* compete with their service. CAS President Massie stated: It would not only injure us significantly, it would put information for free in the hands of world scientists and do it all with taxpayer money. For me to wake up one morning and find I have to compete with my own government is extraordinary. (The fact that much of the money paying for subscriptions to the CAS come from taxpayer-funded scientists seems to have passed him by).

While CAS just contains 'facts' which, at least under US law, don't yet have protection this hasn't prevented ominous talk about copyright and whether the government is overstepping its bounds in its provision of free information to scientists. Perhaps sensing their weak legal position CAS has taken its concerns direct to politicians.

For example Ohio Governor Bob Taft has been persuaded to write a letter to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt stating that PubChem threatens the very existence of CAS. and that I would ask that you carefully evaluate the PubChem initiative to prevent the unnecessary duplication of private information services and the resulting loss of jobs in Ohio. Rather worryingly it appears that PubChem are on the back foot, defending themselves by studiously avowing that their product will in no way compete with CAS' commercial product.

This whole situation is rather ironic given that the ACS was orginally a learned society. However with a chief executive on over a $1 million a year it now appears to be more of a publishing conglomerate, jealously guarding its IP rights and more than happy to thwart access to knowledge and the progress of science if it harms their bottom line. (Readers might recall that the ACS also recently threatened action against Google over the use of the term scholar in google scholar project claiming this infringed on their product called Scifinder Scholar).

Here's the full email containing the story from the Columbus Dispatch (link). Thanks go to Peter Murray-Rust, a great open knowledge evangelist, for pointing me to this fascinating story about the American Chemical Society (ACS) and their 'subsidiary' Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS).

As an aside, the PubChem database gives SMILES descriptors. For example
(from the synonyms link, after a search for 'benzaldehyde'):

IUPAC Name: 4-prop-2-enoxybenzaldehyde
Canonical SMILES: C=CCOC1=CC=C(C=C1)C=O
INChI: InChI=1.0RC/C10H10O2/c1-2-7-12-10-5-3-9(8-11)4-6-10/h2-6,8H,1,7H2

http://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

It is a little hard to imagine PubChem as a serious competitor to
SciFinder. However, in the interests of presenting all sides, here is
the Columbus Post Dispatch article of last Friday.

Columbus Post-Dispatch:
Fed effort 'threat' to Columbus company
Chemical Abstracts leaders say government's giving away information that
it sells
Friday, April 15, 2005
Mike Pramik

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

A federal agency is creating a free scientific database that could put a
central Ohio company employing 1,200 out of business, its leaders say.
CAS, commonly known as Chemical Abstracts Service, says that the
National Institutes of Health's PubChem database copies its CAS
Registry. CAS has asked the Bethesda, Md., health organization to change
the way it compiles information. CAS President Robert Massie said
PubChem has the potential to cripple his company because PubChem is
distributed free, while CAS charges subscription fees for access to its
registry.

"It would not only injure us significantly, it would put information for
free in the hands of world scientists and do it all with taxpayer
money," Massie said. "For me to wake up one morning and find I have to
compete with my own government is extraordinary." The disagreement is
over arcane information - chemical properties, molecular diagrams,
scientific-journal entries - that would baffle the common person. But
the data are used regularly by thousands of chemists and other
scientists around the world. The issue also involves copyright law and
whether the government is overstepping its bounds in its quest to
provide free information in the Internet age. CAS is a division of the
American Chemical Society that, since 1907, has tracked the field of
chemistry. CAS Registry is its signature database, containing
information on 25 million chemicals.

The registry describes the chemical's molecular formula, lists its
synonyms, offers a picture of its structure and provides links to
scientific literature. The registry also assigns a CAS registry number,
a unique and widely accepted means of identification. The National
Institutes of Health last year began Pub-Chem as part of its Molecular
Libraries Roadmap initiative, designed to further medical research.
PubChem, with 850,000 entries, is a critical piece because it will link
molecular data to biomedical literature, said Jeremy Berg, director of
the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

"It's certainly not the same information (as CAS Registry)," Berg said.
But CAS is so concerned with the competing directory's potential that it
has enlisted the aid of Ohio Gov. Bob Taft and members of Congress to
intercede. Taft said in a letter to U.S. Health and Human Services
Secretary Michael Leavitt that PubChem "threatens the very existence of
CAS." 

"I would ask that you carefully evaluate the PubChem initiative to
prevent the unnecessary duplication of private information services and
the resulting loss of jobs in Ohio," Taft said in the letter. CAS has
prepared a video presentation that suggests it might have to cease
operations if PubChem is expanded. It uses the popular Picnic With The
Pops concert series, held on its grounds, to illustrate the company's
value to the community. The issue is being overblown by CAS and its
allies,one of PubChem's creators said. Christopher Austin, with the
National Human Genome Research Institute, called PubChem "a very
rudimentary database (that) connects the dots" between chemical
information and biomedical research. Austin likened PubChem to a company
phone directory developed from names already listed in the White Pages.
"You have to have that same basic information," he said. The two sides
met in late March, but the issue wasn't resolved.

Michael Dennis, vice president of business development for CAS, said
PubChem has mimicked the CAS Registry by providing the same type of
information, even down to the CAS identification number.
Austin said that was by design. "We could have left that off," he said.
"But our feeling was we ought to be as comprehensive as possible and
allow people to go seamlessly to the CAS resources we feel are so
valuable. "(But) we got dinged by CAS for stealing their numbers." 

Massie and others said they wouldn't object to the database if it stuck
to its originally stated purpose: providing information on so-called
"small molecules" to advance medical research. But they say PubChem
hasn't done that. "What they're actually doing alarms us," said
Madeleine Jacobs, chief executive of the American Chemical Society.
"They are re-creating our registry of chemical substances, but they
don't yet have any data from the molecular-screening initiative. "I
would disagree that what they're doing doesn't duplicate us."

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