9 The Basics – Reading Rights and Incidentals

Desired Result

This clause or these clauses cover basic rights of access to the materials, the ability of Authorized Users to read the content, see it on their screens with all of the incidental copying that entails, print out copies for their own use, and link to and cite the content.

Essentials of the Law

Many of the specific enumerated uses described in this section can be safely assumed to be included in the general grant of license for academic use, and do not necessarily need to be included in every contract.  Occasionally, however, you will be working with a vendor or a template contract that is not accustomed to academic use (for example, business databases who most commonly license to industry sectors for internal use), and may be operating from a very different set of assumptions.  If that is the case, the language in this section can be helpful to clarify these basic requirements.

Desired Language

Example clauses include:

Display.  Licensee and Authorized Users shall have the right to electronically display the Licensed Materials.^[1]

Digitally Copy.  Licensee and Authorized Users may download and digitally copy a reasonable portion of the Licensed Materials.^[2]

Print Copy.  Licensee and Authorized Users may print a reasonable portion of the Licensed Materials.^[3]

Caching. Licensee and Authorized Users may make local digital copies of the Licensed Materials in order to ensure efficient use by Authorized Users by appropriate browser or other software. ^[4]

Collections of Information. Licensee and Authorized Users shall be permitted to extract or use information contained in the Licensed Materials for educational, scientific, or research purposes, including extraction and manipulation of information for the purpose of illustration, explanation, example, comment, criticism, teaching, research, or analysis.^[5]

Electronic Links. Licensee and Authorized Users may provide hyperlinks from the Licensee’s and Authorized Users’ web page(s), web site(s), and publications to individual units of content within the Licensed Materials.^[6]

Tricks and Traps

In the most likely use case for these clauses, the vendor contract will include something that limits one of the rights listed in the example clauses, or you may otherwise have reason to believe that they may have different expectations about the use. If that occurs, then this language can be introduced as an alternative (generally alongside deleting the problematic original language).

Importance and Risk

In general, the risk of omitting these clauses is low.  Most reasonable people would assume that the general grant of license includes the steps reasonably necessary for users to see the materials, such as the ability to read it on a screen, print it out, and the ability to use the information contained within it for educational purposes.  The risk of including them is also low, but there is a mild risk of lessening the impact of your general clauses by over-specifying these details.  With that said, if a vendor actually objects to one of these clauses or prohibits one of these actions, it could effectively make the product unusable.