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Follow up from:

Can information about a drug - trade name, interactions, etc. - be copyright protected?

Numerous drug databases indicate that the information they provide about drugs is free for educational use.

I am building a website that may use snippets of information, for instance, interactions of a drug or what a drug is used for. This won't be a copy and paste of what the drug databases provide.

Any advice on whether this would infringe copyright? Is drug information opensource information? Do I need to 'cite the source'? If so, numerous databases have the same information, who do i Cite

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  • As well as copyright, some jurisdictions (e.g., EU, UK, Australia) have sui generis database rights which even protect the information contained in the database, to some extent. Where you, and the drug companies, are based, will matter.
    – David A. Craven
    Feb 16, 2023 at 11:30
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    Information isn't protected by copyright, only particularly expressions of information are protected by copyright.
    – ohwilleke
    Feb 16, 2023 at 16:50
  • This question is asking what the law does and does not permit. It is in NO way asking for specific legal advice, as this site defines RSLA, and should not be closed on that basis. If it is so closed. I will vote to reopen it.
    – David Siegel
    Feb 17, 2023 at 23:50
  • The OP says "Any advice on whether this would infringe copyright?", by the way welcome @FD2 to Law SE.
    – Aitzaz Imtiaz
    Feb 19, 2023 at 14:48

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Your first sentence already says that these databases don't consider their information "open source". You may consider it open source, but that will only get you into court.

Are you using the data for educational or for commercial use? Extracting bits that you are interested in from all database entries and using them to build an application points very strongly to commercial use. Again, you may disagree, but that will only get you into court.

You can collect the information you want from the original sources. That's 1,000 times more work, but much more likely to be legal. On the other hand, that's what these people creating the databases have done, and that's how they make their living. So do you expect the law to help you destroying their livelihood?

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