What is the legal status of CAS Numbers? I'd assumed that they were public property for the good of us all. So I assumed it was possible for anyone to get hold of a copy of the code so we can put it on our computers and swap easily between name and number. A simple ASCII table would be all one needs - bringing it into a simple database package would be trivial.
Databases generally fall under rules concerning "collection copyright". I am not a lawyer, but that is where you should start looking. The CAS numbers might be a more-complicated case, because not only did CAS gather them (as might a phone company), but it also authored them. Regardless, I don't know of many "simple" databases that can handle 16 million-odd records. :-} The database you are looking for is the CAS Registry File. Available from CAS, and from authorized distributors (Dialog, Questel, Beilstein (I think), etc.) Jonathan Brecher CambridgeSoft Corporation jsb@camsoft.com chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To unsubscribe, send to majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message; unsubscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (rzepa@ic.ac.uk)