Can a library modify EndNote styles for its users?

Hi!

Because of the conflict between EndNote and Zotero, there is now a new page with “Terms of use” that you have to agree with before  you can download styles from EndNote.com. Term 2 goes like this:

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2. RESTRICTIONS
End User may not modify, translate, decompile, reverse engineer, retransmit in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopied, recorded or otherwise), resell or redistribute EndNote and its associated files, or any portion thereof, without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters.

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As a support person for EndNote (which our university has a site licence for) I regularly have to help users that have problems with styles that are missing or styles not matching the journal they want to publish in. I will usually modify existing styles and send the new style to the user (All our users have legal EndNote programs though our university lisence). This is something most EndNote support persons do, I guess.

 So my question is. Is this kind of practice in conflict with term 2 cited above?

Best wishes

Jan Ove 

My understanding: you can’t sell your custom-made Endnote filters, but you can help other people to modify filters/styles. Particularly, if the help is through libraries in academic institutions, I don’t think it is “redistribution” of Thomson’s property.

Just save them as different name, and those custom-made filters/styles should be your files, like your database files. At least that’s what I think. Thomson may need to clarify about creating custom filters/styles in the term&agreement stuff. A lot of publishers actually post Endnote styles in their web site, with free download. Do they all get written consent from Thomson before they modify some included templates?

Best regards,

I would not take myoshigi or any other community member’s word on this issue.  Consult with your University’s legal counsel on the matter & try to get explicity written permission for action you take.

This might be conservative, but you should not play “fast and loose” when lawyers are involved.

It makes absolutely no sense for EndNote to take litigation against its customers for improving the usability of the product.  Pragmatically, I doubt they would do this–they are neither malicious, nor stupid.  However, my reading of the current contract is consistent with yours–that the current contract prohibits even this kind of change & they will be able to pursue you if they see fit to do so.

Thanks for the input, but I was hoping that some of the moderators from Thomson Reuters were going to comment on this issue. They are the ones who know the answer to the question.

Best wishes 

Jan Ove Rein 

They didn’t comment in my thread.

If I may give my impression (I chatted informally with lawyers I know about this issue, but I am not a lawyer and I do not work at Thomson, so I could be completely wrong):

Lawyers wrote the new click-through contract, but lawyers probably do not follow these forums (and probably would not make any sweeping statements here if they did follow them). The technical people at Thomson who do reply on these forums most likely cannot comment on legal matters. Therefore, the best that I am hoping for is that the technical people will take concerns raised on these forums to the people they need to for the poor, overly-restrictive license to be rewritten to everyone’s benefit. Until or unless that happens, I would not modify styles or post modified styles (in these forums or on our institutional site) unless the personal need to do so is so overwhelming that we decide to jump through the new hoops of getting permission on a case-by-case basis.

Be cool. I am sure that our friendly moderators and tech support are fighting as we speak with the lawyers.  Having fought with lawyers myself, it takes time to, well, sway them!

Let me take my previous comments back because it was based on my personal assumption, and yes, this is the issue Thomson itself needs to clarify. I know a lot of libraries offer Endnote training courses, and in many cases help users to learn how to modify styles and filters (Endnote contents file).

My assumption came from the fact that 1) Endnote help file indeed tells us how to modify style files from a template that’s created and provided by Thomson, 2) the style suggestion form in their website encourages to contact Endnote forum (I believe this the place) if users can not find the exact-match style, and 3) This forum has “Endnote styles, filters, connections” thread, where Rick Meyler (@Thomson) tells “This forum may be used to share customized EndNote content files and pose questions related to the creation and modification of EndNote styles, filters and connection files.  XML, ENZ, ENS, and ENF files may be attached to posts here.”  Based on these three things, I interpreted personally, like  “people in the web are allowed to post .ens files for other users, why not library?” 

But, once again, sharing through web forum and helping from library are different legal matters. So waiting Thomson’s response for clarification is the best suggestion.

Best regards,

Message Edited by myoshigi on 10-19-2008 10:26 PM

“It has always been and continues to be our policy that licensed EndNote individual and institutional customers are free to customize and share EndNote files with other licensed EndNote users for use solely in conjunction with the Software.”

Jason Rollins, EndNote Product Development

Am I crazy?

I got a ping that the two license threads had been update & there was a post by Thomson-Reuters employee JasonR stating:

“It has always been and continues to be our policy that licensed EndNote individual and institutional customers are free to customize and share EndNote files with other licensed EndNote users for use solely in conjunction with the Software.”

Jason Rollins, EndNote Product Development

This would seem to serve as the written consent we have asked for, but I hope to see the license updated explicitly & I wonder why the post has been deleted.

I got a ping that the two license threads had been update & there was a post by Thomson-Reuters employee JasonR stating:

“It has always been and continues to be our policy that licensed EndNote individual and institutional customers are free to customize and share EndNote files with other licensed EndNote users for use solely in conjunction with the Software.”

Jason Rollins, EndNote Product Development

This would seem to serve as the written consent we have asked for, but I hope to see the license updated explicitly & I wonder why the post has been deleted.

NOTE: I am reposting this, as Thomson Reuters deleted my first post.  Please do not delete my posts!  Perhaps Jason made a mistake by posting.  If so, just fess up to it & state what the current policy really is.

It has always been and continues to be our policy that licensed EndNote individual and institutional customers are free to customize and share style (.ens), database (.enl & .enlx), filter (.enf), and connection (.enz) EndNote files created using EndNote with other licensed EndNote users for use solely in conjunction with the Software.
 

Jason Rollins, EndNote Product Development

…licensed EndNote individual and institutional customers are free to customize and share style (.ens), database (.enl & .enlx), filter (.enf), and connection (.enz) EndNote files created using EndNote with other licensed EndNote users for use solely in conjunction with the Software.

(emphasis mine)

Just for clarification: would these limitations apply not only to files that were originally distributed by EndNote, but also to files that are created in EndNote from scratch? I can’t find anything in my current EULA that would limit my rights for such files and no other software I have seems to make these claims. If I write a paper in Word, Microsoft doesn’t limit my distribution rights of that file.

I was not previously concerned about distributing these “novel” files, as I assumed that, if the files are novel enough to have a copyright, I would be the holder of that right.  After closer reading of this comment, I am more troubled by the new terms of use & would appreciate clarification. I guess I’ll be consulting our institution’s lawyers more formally; we do want to distribute files created from scratch, but I am worried about increased liability.

On this latter note: I would still like to know what customers who customize and share (and possibly create) files with EndNote need to do to ensure compliance with policy. Do we assume that everyone knows it? Do we need to embed some sort of license in the files, themselves? Can we have the files on a file server with a separate license that might not be read?  What should the terms of said license be?

edited for grammar and clairty:

Message Edited by noksagt on 10-23-2008 08:10 AM

Just to be completely clear, it has never been possible to create an EndNote Bibliographic Output Style file (.ens) file “from scratch”. When one creates a new .ens file from within EndNote, this is actually a modification of a file template that contains thousands of characters of code that defines many default and essential characterics of the file and its interaction with other components of the overall EndNote application.

Jason Rollins, EndNote Product Development

Thanks for the initial reply.

I hate to say it, but I am still puzzled.

Can’t the same be said for most file formats?  Most binary files (EndNote files, included) are blackboxes to me, so I really don’t know the differences.  But when I create an “empty” file in Word, the file size is non-zero (and, if I recall correctly, larger than some EndNote styles) & presumably that holds traits shared by all Word documents.   When I actually add content to that file, that new content is surely encoded in such a way that is only understood by other programs that have the ability to read the particular file format.

 In any case, we would like to continue distributing files that have we “created” (presumably based on that minimal template that you describe, but starting from a blank slate in the EndNote editor).  We’d at least like EndNote users to be able to use these.  It is less important to us that non-EndNote users be allowed to use these  particular files (although, given the choice, we’d certainly want them to be used or modified by as many other users as possible & would not care if this was done outside of EndNote).  What do we need to do to be compliant with policy?