[Bioc-devel] License question for experimental data package

I was going to mention droit d'auteur under EU common law, but somehow
that seemed more in Herv?'s wheelhouse ;-).

--t

On Mar 4, 2016, at 7:17 AM, Lyle Burgoon <burgoon.lyle at gmail.com> wrote:

Also keep in mind US copyright rules for data are different from

European. We ran into this recently when wanting to publish european data
from a web database.

On Mar 4, 2016 10:05 AM, "Tim Triche, Jr." <tim.triche at gmail.com>

wrote:

Data (facts) are not copyright worthy, but databases (collections of

facts) can be.  See Feist v Rural for precedent; in short, there must be an
inobvious and creative aspect to the database for it to be elevated to
copyrightable status.  I doubt that a collection of datasets would clear
this bar, but it's still worth noting.

--t

On Mar 4, 2016, at 6:22 AM, Robert M. Flight <rflight79 at gmail.com>

wrote:

I am pretty sure in general "data" is not copyrightable per se (
http://www.lib.umich.edu/copyright/facts-and-data), so while I might
contact the original authors as a courtesy, if the data has been

released

into any public database, then you should be free to do with it as you
please. Providing the original accession numbers for the data and

relevant

citations (if they exist) so that it is easy for you and others to be

given

credit if the data is used would be a good thing to do.

Also, I would personally go with the CC0 (waive of copyright, see
https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/CC0) for a data package, as

the data

is already publicly available, you have just packaged it together

into a

useful set.

My 2 cents.

-Robert

Robert M Flight, PhD
Bioinformatics Research Associate
Resource Center for Stable Isotope Resolved Metabolomics
Manager, Systems Biology and Omics Integration Journal Club
Markey Cancer Center
CC434 Roach Building
University of Kentucky
Lexington, KY

Twitter: @rmflight
Web: rmflight.github.io
ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8141-7788
EM rflight79 at gmail.com
PH 502-509-1827

To call in the statistician after the experiment is done may be no

more

than asking him to perform a post-mortem examination: he may be able

to say

what the experiment died of. - Ronald Fisher



On Fri, Mar 4, 2016 at 8:52 AM Kasper Daniel Hansen <
kasperdanielhansen at gmail.com> wrote:

For data packages, which does not contain any code, it seems weird

to use a

software license such as GPL or GPL-2.  It seems better to use

something

like Artistic-2.0 or one of the CC licenses.

On Thu, Mar 3, 2016 at 5:15 PM, davide risso <risso.davide at gmail.com

wrote:

Hi Herv? and Sean,

thanks for your help. It will indeed be interesting to hear how

other

people chose the license, especially for those package that

redistribute

a

dataset not from their lab.

I do have an experimental data package in Bioc, zebrafishRNASeq,

but it's

an experiment from a collaborator and at the time I didn't pay much
attention on which license to use.
In this case, I'd like to redistribute data from different labs. I

guess

I

will contact the original authors at least as a courtesy.
But I'm still keen to hear opinions on which license(s) is

appropriate

for

experimental data sharing.

Best,
davide




On Thu, Mar 3, 2016 at 12:50 PM Herv? Pag?s <hpages at fredhutch.org>

wrote:

Hi Davide,

On 03/01/2016 02:25 PM, davide risso wrote:
Dear Bioc developers,

I recently downloaded three publicly available single-cell RNA-seq

datasets

from the NCBI GEO/SRA repository and created an R package with

some

gene-level summaries (read counts and FPKMs).

I'm currently using the package locally for my own tests, but I'm

thinking

that this may be a useful resource for the community and thinking

of

sharing it on github and eventually submit it to Bioconductor.

I was not involved in any way with the original studies, and I'm

wondering

what is the best practice in terms of license / data sharing.

Since

there

are many experimental data packages in Bioconductor, I'm guessing

that

I'm

not the first person wondering about this.

From the NCBI website, I read (quote from

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/home/about/policies.shtml):
Databases of molecular data on the NCBI Web site include such

examples

as

nucleotide sequences (GenBank), protein sequences, macromolecular
structures, molecular variation, gene expression, and mapping

data.

They

are designed to provide and encourage access within the scientific
community to sources of current and comprehensive information.

Therefore,

NCBI itself places no restrictions on the use or distribution of

the

data

contained therein. Nor do we accept data when the submitter has

requested

restrictions on reuse or redistribution. However, some submitters

of

the

original data (or the country of origin of such data) may claim

patent,

copyright, or other intellectual property rights in all or a

portion

of

the

data (that has been submitted). NCBI is not in a position to

assess

the

validity of such claims and since there is no transfer of rights

from

submitters to NCBI, NCBI has no rights to transfer to a third

party.

Therefore, NCBI cannot provide comment or unrestricted permission
concerning the use, copying, or distribution of the information

contained

in the molecular databases.

Should I contact the original authors for permission? Or is the

fact

that

the data were publicly shared enough to grant me permission to

redistribute?

In that case, is there a standard license that I should use?

Thanks for any feedback / thought!

I don't have much to offer. AFAIK we don't really have guidelines

or

recommendations for what license to use for experimental data

packages,

except for the usual "make sure you use an appropriate license"

advice.

So far it has really been up to each author/maintainer to make sure
they pick up a license that is compatible with the original
license/copyright/patent of the original data they are packaging
and with its redistribution thru the Bioconductor channel.

FWIW here is a summary of the licenses used by the 276 experimental
data packages currently in BioC devel:

  License       Nb of packages
  ------------  --------------
  GPL                      135
  Artistic-2.0              96
  LGPL                      41
  other                      4

Would be interesting to hear from other developers about this. For
example, how people choose between GPL vs Artistic-2.0? Is one
license typically more appropriate for packaging and redistributing
data that is already publicly available?

H.

Best,
davide

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--
Herv? Pag?s

Program in Computational Biology
Division of Public Health Sciences
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
1100 Fairview Ave. N, M1-B514
P.O. Box 19024
Seattle, WA 98109-1024

E-mail: hpages at fredhutch.org
Phone:  (206) 667-5791
Fax:    (206) 667-1319

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