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Copyright Claim Sets Back Cognitive Impairment Testing

Posted by Soulskill on from the we-invented-the-question-mark dept.

Kilrah_il writes "A recent New England Journal of Medicine editorial talks about the mini-mental state examination — a standardized screening test for cognitive impairment. After years of being widely used, the original authors claim to own copyright on the test and 'a licensed version of the MMSE can now be purchased [...] for $1.23 per test. The MMSE form is gradually disappearing from textbooks, Web sites, and clinical tool kits.' The article goes on to describe the working of copyright law and various alternative licenses, including GNU Free Documentation License, and ends with the following suggestion: 'We suggest that authors of widely used clinical tools provide explicit permissive licensing, ideally with a form of copyleft. Any new tool developed with public funds should be required to use a copyleft or similar license to guarantee the freedom to distribute and improve it, similar to the requirement for open-access publication of research funded by the National Institutes of Health.'"

3 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. You failed the (comprehension) test by Mathinker · · Score: 5, Informative

    The authors were letting everyone download the new test for free; a corporation, PAR, to which the old test had been licensed is to blame for claiming copyright over (elements of) the new test which may eventually replace the old one.

    Unfortunately, there's no easy way to leave them a comment about one's opinion of their behavior on their website. I looked.

  2. They did. Didn't help. by Mathinker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The authors did. That didn't help them against the infringement claims of the corporation which benefits from an older test.

    This is one example why many believe copyright does on the whole more damage than benefit to society.

  3. Re:Apologies by John+Newman · · Score: 5, Informative

    Sorry, I didn't see that the summary incorrectly states that the authors of the older test were claiming infringement. AFAIK, they're not.

    I guess I failed the comprehension test. Actually, I didn't really read the summary carefully, since I was already familiar with the actual facts.

    I am one of the authors of the NEJM op/ed article.

    It is all a little confusing. There are three parties here:
    1. The original authors of the MMSE, who through PAR are strictly enforcing copyright protections of the MMSE
    2. The authors of a new tool, the Sweet 16, which was created as an open-access alternative to the MMSE but was "taken down" by PAR in a copyright dispute
    3. Us, the authors of TFA, who have no relationship to #1 or #2 but are very worried about what this all means for the practice and progress of medicine