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by ericpauley
1467 days ago
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While the facts presented in a scientific paper may not be copyrighted, the actual form and content of the paper clearly is, both common-sense and legally. Papers contain prose, artistic representations (figures), potentially photographs, and other stylistic elements that are clearly copyrightable. Whether works funded by government dollars should be copyrightable is of course a different question. |
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In copyright there is already a concept (in UK caselaw at the very least) that things that can only be presented in a limited way are effectively not artistic enough to gain copyright. A scientific paper can have artistic prose and such, but the purpose is to make a factual presentation. I'd be happy to allow people to chose to state that their paper is not a presentation of facts, but such things should not be accepted into scientific corpus and should be excluded when considering if an author has fulfilled a contract to produce a scientific paper, or fulfilled a duty to do scientific research.
Photographs which are slavish reproductions---which a photo of apparatus needs to be in order to be scientifically useful---are not artistic works, for example. You can choose puce headings with lilac lines for your table but if it's in a scientific paper the purpose is informational [if that wasn't your purpose then you shouldn't have done it]. Coloured diagrams, sure, if they're used outside the context of the paper, and were manually manipulated, then allow them to be considered artistic works; but in the context of the paper they're presentations of supposed facts.
I don't doubt you can lawyer your way into arguing your scientific paper is a trademark, or a registered design, but it seems entirely reasonable to simply prevent such things with ab exclusion clause in the legislation like "scientific papers are not subject to IP laws and can be shared freely". Of course you need to say what a paper is (something published as if it were a paper, or submitted to a journal as it were a paper, or made available publicly as if were a paper).