RE: Licenses for Books? Open With Caution

["Peter Picerno" <ppicerno@nova.edu>]

Interesting article ... what raised a flag for me was that since the
delivery of the Omnicare books mentioned in the article was unsolicited by
the recipients (i.e., sent by the publisher to the physicians without
their being ordered), wouldn't the same law apply to them which applies to
the reception of other unsolicited materials -- i.e., that they are able
to be considered a gift from the publisher and as such are not merchandise
which must be paid for? It would seem that, by extension, any license
agreements attached to such unsolicited (and unlawfully sent) materials
would be null and void. (Section 3009 of Title 39 of the United States
Code deals with mailings of unordered merchandise. Subsection (b): Any
merchandise mailed in violation of subsection (a) of this section, or
within the exceptions contained therein, may be treated as a gift by the
recipient, who shall have the right to retain, use, discard, or dispose of
it in any manner he sees fit without any obligation whatsoever to the
sender.)

Dr. Peter V. Picerno
Acquisitions and Serials Librarian
Nova Southeastern University Libraries
3100 Ray Ferrero Jr Blvd
Fort Lauderdale   FL   33314-7796
(954) 262-4662
FAX (954) 262-3946

-----Original Message-----
Thought this might be of interest to Liblicense readers.

LISNews.com (http://www.lisnews.com) is reporting a story from InfoWorld
(http://www.infoworld.com) about a shrinkwrap license for a pharmaceutical
reference book.  The full story is at
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/02/08/12/020812opgripe.xml .

--
Dale Boles, Information Services Librarian
Wildlife Conservation Society
dboles@wcs.org
library@wcs.org