EDIT - European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy -

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Current comment:

Comments by 13-RBINS on behalf of the General Director Camille Pisani.
Eric De Weer (EDW), Thierry Backeljau (TB) & Isa Van de Velde (IVDV)
Submitted to NO on 21/06/2008.

General remark: given that at the time of reading the IP document, EDW and TB did not have all the relevant background on some parts of the IP document, certain remarks may be superfluous.

Comments:

General:
Is it clear in this IP document what is meant by “non-commercial purposes”? We feel that this term needs a clear definition. The same applies to terms such as “fair and non-discriminatory market conditions”, “taxonomic data”, “Open Source License Agreements”,...

Scope §4:
This § defines the aims of the agreement and emphasises the link with legislation with respect to IP across multiple territories. Concerning this latter point: (1) Are the countries involved well-defined; (2) What is the legal relationship between the rules in the IP document and the respective national legislation? (3) Is there a general agreement on the different definitions of the terms used in the IP document [Note by IVDV: some terms are indeed defined cf. Consortium agreement, but other are not e.g. “non-commercial purposes” see general comment above]

Governance bullet 10:
there is no clear explanation of what is the IPR register [note by IVDV: IPR itself is defined, but not IPR register]

Governance, last bullet:
Apparently this IP agreement also applies AFTER the termination of the current EDIT project. That is OK, but there is no clear provision with respect to partners that want to terminate this agreement. Is it not relevant to include such provision?

Use of Thirs Party Generated Content, bullet 3:
Is there a consensus between the contractors about the interpretation of the concept “Orphan Works”? There are clear rules on this issue in the US and Canada, but not in Europe (at least as far as EDW knows].

Access, bullets 3-4:
When does one speaks about “commercial exploitation” and “commercial access”? This point relates also to the interpretation of “commercial” vs “non-commercial” issues in general (see also first comment about definitions here above).

Crediting, bullet 2:
Are the wordings “that the project received funding” and “an indication of the contribution made by” clear for all contractors?

Management of Rights Information, bullet 2:
What is the “Rights Management database”?