Is using Endnote styles illegal?

komrade

The "Terms of Use" that you have to agree to here seem to make it illegal to use Endnote styles with other products:
Styles can be used "only in conjunction with EndNote"

This "Terms of Use" page seems to have appeared earlier this year (it's not in the internet archive)

Is it a response to the lawsuit which was dismissed?
Does anyone dare comment?!

noksagt

The terms that disallow use of the styles outside of Endnote were put into place sometime after January, 2008 & were amended further after the lawsuit was filed.

Feel free to consult with a lawyer as to your rights and responsibilities in this manner.

CSL-based styles, which are an open format & supported natively, are quite good & the community here is great about generating styles that are needed.

bdarcus

Put it this way: TR is certainly asserting it is a violation of their terms of use to use the styles they provide in any application other than Endnote.

Also, I wouldn't read anything in particular into the dismissal, which was based on a legal technicality, rather than the substance of the issues.

So my conclusion would be the same as noksagt's: probably better all around to help improve the availability of CSL styles, which you are free to use wherever you want, including in Endnote (if they were to support it) ;-)

sean

Where people have agreed to terms of use with EndNote, it is not Zotero's intention to encourage people to violate those terms. If you have questions about whether Thomson Reuters claims ownership of EndNote style files you create or believes you cannot read any ENS files (even ENS files created by third-parties) with Zotero, contact them for clarification of their license. And report back so everybody can see what they have to say about it.

Also, while we do not believe Thomson Reuters has any right to prevent you from doing as you please with style files they did not create, we cannot speak for Thomson Reuters itself, and we are not in a position to provide legal advice.