Licenses

This page is intended to provide an overview of the licensing terms, especially of CodeSystem resources, offered on the terminology server of the SU-TermServ. However, this is not legal advice.

The headings used here are used in the resources provided by the SU-TermServ in the form of meta.tag elements. This page is available as a CodeSystem resource for this purpose.

All external links were valid at the time of creating this page (on 2024-08-30).

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atc-who

The ATC-WHO is maintained by the WHO Collaborating Centre for Drug Statistics (WHOCC) at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH). An electronic version is only distributed for a fee. A version in FHIR by the SU-TermServ is currently not available.

For more information, please refer to the WHOCC pages.

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bfarm

For the use of the resources International Statistical Classification of Diseases, German Modification (ICD-10-GM), Operationen- und Prozedurenschlüssel (German procedure classification, OPS), International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10-WHO) and Alpha-ID-SE, the licensing terms of the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM) apply. These are available in a PDF 🇩🇪.

Particularly, the prohibition of changes should be noted, i.e.:

Changes to the official key numbers and the associated texts, to the instructions for the use of the key and other information for coding are not permitted. [Conditions for the use of the ICD-10-GM, our translation]

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bfarm-icd-o-3

For the use of the German translation of the International Classification of Diseases for Oncology (ICD-O-3), the licensing terms of the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM) apply. These are available in a PDF 🇩🇪.

In addition to the prohibition of changes, which is cited above in bfarm 🔗, it is particularly noted that use in countries outside the Federal Republic of Germany is subject to certain conditions (§1 (5)).

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bfarm-icf

For the use of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF), the licensing terms of the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM) apply. These are available in a PDF 🇩🇪.

In addition to the prohibition of changes, which is quoted above under bfarm 🔗, it is particularly noted that use in countries outside the Federal Republic of Germany is subject to certain conditions (§1 (4)).

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cas

The CAS Registry is a database for information about chemical substances, managed by the American Chemical Society. To uniquely identify the substances, CAS assigns so-called registry numbers, often referred to as CAS numbers. These CAS numbers have established themselves worldwide as the standard for identifying chemical substances.

Access to the CAS database is regulated and subject to charges. However, CAS provides a platform, CAS Common Chemistry, where a limited number of CAS numbers and associated information can be queried for free. The information from CAS Common Chemistry is available under the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC 4.0 license 🔗.

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cc0-1.0

The person who associated a work with this deed has dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all of his or her rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law. You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. [Deed]

Further information is available on the Creative Commons’ website.

This license is applied to resources distributed directly by the SU-TermServ, and may be applicable to other resources. While FHIR resources are also licensed using CC0-1.0, further information is given in the respective section 🔗.

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Creative Commons Licenses

Creative Commons licenses give everyone from individual creators to large institutions a standardized way to grant the public permission to use their creative work under copyright law. From the reuser’s perspective, the presence of a Creative Commons license on a copyrighted work answers the question, What can I do with this work?. [About CC Licenses 🇬🇧]

Please see the linked license statements below for more information about the respective license.

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dicom

No license fee is charged for the use of the DICOM standard in products, and no permission is required. The DICOM standard files are publicly available and can be downloaded from the DICOM website.

Please refer to the NEMA License Agreement and the Participate page of DICOM.

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edqm

EDQM Standard Terms is a database of terms used in the supporting materials for medicinal products [EDQM Standard Terms - Introduction and Guidance for Use] (via archive.org):

The lists of Standard Terms were initially drawn up by the European Pharmacopoeia (Ph. Eur.) Commission further to the request of the EU Commission for use in marketing authorisation applications (MAAs), labelling (including the summary of product characteristics (SmPC) and patient information leaflet (PIL)), and electronic communications. Standard Terms have the double purpose of bringing information to the patient/user/prescriber and distinguishing medicinal products having the same trade-name.

For the use of the EDQM data, the following conditions apply [EDQM Standard Terms - Conditions of use] (login required):

If data from Standard Terms is reproduced in any system, website, publication, etc., the following conditions apply.

• It must be clearly stated that the data is from the EDQM Standard Terms database (http://standardterms.edqm.eu), and that it is reproduced with the permission of the European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines & HealthCare, Council of Europe (EDQM).
• The Standard Terms data must not be modified independently, and no other data may be represented as being part of Standard Terms. If any additional data is presented alongside, it must be made clear that it does not originate from Standard Terms.
• The date on which the data was retrieved from the Standard Terms database must be clearly stated, with a notice that the EDQM Standard Terms database is not a static list and content can change over time.

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fhir

The HL7®️ FHIR®️ standard is published under the CC0 license 🔗. However, the use of the trademark is subject to additional rules. Further information can be found on the HL7 website.

Terminology artifacts within the standard may have additional license terms. Further information can also be found on the HL7 website.

Resources published within the HL7 FHIR standard are merely redistributed by the SU-TermServ and not altered beyond adding tags and changing IDs. Altering the specification and distributing it under the name “FHIR” is not allowed by the HL7 FHIR license terms.

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gecco

The GECCO dataset and the FHIR profilation was created by the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (Berlin Institute of Health, BIH). For the use of the resources, the following statements were made in the ImplementationGuide:

The content of this specification is public. Reuse or publication claims are not limited.
For the rights of use of the underlying FHIR technology see the FHIR Base Specification.
Some code systems in use are issued and maintained by other organizations. The copyright of the respective publishers listed there is applicable.

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hl7-de

For the use of the FHIR implementation guides provided by HL7 Germany e. V., the following conditions apply [Implementierungsleitfaden FHIR-Basis für das deutsche Gesundheitswesen 🇩🇪] (our machine translation):

Copyright © 2016-: HL7 Germany e. V., Anna-Louisa-Karsch-Str. 2, 10178 Berlin
The content of this specification is public. The claims for reuse or publication are not limited.
For the usage rights of the underlying FHIR technology, see the FHIR base specification.
Some code systems used are issued and maintained by other organizations. The copyright of the publishers listed there applies.

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ietf-iana

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) are organizations that deal with the standardization and management of Internet protocols and resources. The IETF develops the technical standards, while the IANA manages the protocol parameters. For the use of the protocol registries, the IANA and IETF have published a joint statement [Joint Statement of IANA and IETF Concerning Copyright Rights in the Protocol Registries dated 10 November 2021]:

IANA and IETF intend that the Protocol Registries may be freely used by any party for any purpose. Both IANA and IETF believe that the Protocol Registries consist primarily of factual information that is unlikely to be protectable as a matter of copyright law. However, for additional clarity, and to avoid any potential confusion about applicable rights, both IANA and IETF desire to (a) dedicate any applicable copyright rights that they may own in the Protocol Registries to the public domain, and (b) license any copyright or related rights for which they are a licensee (with a right to sublicense) to the broadest extent that they are permitted to do so. Accordingly, both IANA and IETF affirm that any applicable rights that they may have in the Protocol Registries are subject to the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 dedication found at https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode.

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ihe

Resources published by the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) initiative are licensed by IHE under Creative Commons licenses [IHE License]:

Artifacts published by IHE International are licensed under the following standard copyright licenses:
a) Technical documents, including the IHE Technical Frameworks, their supplements and related technical specifications, are licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (Attributions 4.0 International) License. Technical Documents published by IHE International may reference copyrighted materials owned or controlled by other parties, and these materials may be subject to additional licensing terms.
b) Software testing tools and their components, including HE Gazelle®, are licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA-NC 4.0 (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International) License.
c) Test plans used in combination with (a) and (b) are licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA-NC 4.0 (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International) License.

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code

This license tag was applied to the resource urn:iso:std:iso:3166. This ISO standard assigns country codes. For obtaining a machine-readable version of the country codes, please refer to the ISO page. The SU-TermServ does not distribute a FHIR version with the content of this resource.

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kbv

The National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (Kassenärztliche Bundesvereinigung, KBV) has specified FHIR resources that are relevant for system manufacturers and operators in the healthcare sector in Germany. The KBV distributes these resources for the implementation of compliant systems. For more information, please refer to the pages of the KBV 🇩🇪.

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loinc

For the use of LOINC, the licensing terms of the Regenstrief Institute must be observed. These are available on the LOINC website.

Particularly, clause (5) of the [LOINC License] should be noted:

The LOINC parts and LOINC part hierarchies shall not be used in any manner except as they are presented in the Licensed Materials (and/or in other formats of distribution approved by Regenstrief Institute, Inc.) to organize, categorize, and be constituents of LOINC terms, and provide links to external terminologies. The LOINC parts and LOINC part hierarchies are subject to change, addition, modification, or deletion, without notice, and are not strictly managed under the same policies as LOINC terms.

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mii-cds

The artifacts of the MII core data set are generally intended for free use. A more precise formulation is still being developed by the KDS team and will be added here.

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orphanet

OrphaNet and OrphaData are databases that provide information on rare diseases and orphan drugs. The content is maintained by INSERM US14, the French Institute of Health and Medical Research (Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale). INSERM holds all copyrights to the database [About OrphaNet] (Abschnitt Intellectual Property, highlighting ours):

The INSERM holds all intellectual property rights concerning the structure of the database, the format of the website, the logo and copyright, as well as the data and information on the site (content, texts, classifications, nomenclatures, and press statements).
[…] However, INSERM US14 allows the user to reproduce all or part of the site’s content, in one saved or printed copy. This right applies strictly to personal, private and non-collective use of the material.</br/> Non-profit organisations are authorised to copy and distribute information from the site, as long as this information is neither modified nor sold. In addition to this, the terms of the intellectual property rights and the source of the information must be provided.

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pzn

The Pharmaceutical Central Number (PZN) is assigned by the Informationsstelle für Arzneispezialitäten - IFA GmbH. The PZN is a unique identification number for pharmaceuticals in Germany. The PZN is usually printed on the packaging of the medication.

To retrieve data from IFA GmbH, registration for data provision is required. No data from IFA GmbH is provided through SU-TermServ. For more information, please refer to the IFA website 🇩🇪.

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rtmms

The Rosetta Terminology Mapping Management System (RTMMS) provides the terminology from the ISO/IEEE-11073 standard.

The licensing terms of the RTMMS apply:

Copyright © 2016 by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
Three Park Avenue, New York, New York 10016-5997, USA
All rights reserved.
IEEE, as part of its support of the RTMMS database and on-going, royalty-free agreement with the NIST, makes these terms available for the development of IEEE11073 compliant products and supporting material (e.g. in user documentation, collateral, etc.). Any use of IEEE terms beyond compliant products and support material may require prior approval from IEEE. Please notify IEEE of any request to use, modify, or reproduce these terms in any manner beyond the permitted use described above. To request permission, please submit your request to [email protected].

The following information is provided free of charge to all NIST RTMMS users via the IEEE-SA and NIST Royalty Free Agreement:

• “Reference ID” (‘REFID’ in RTMMS)
• “Terminology Code” (‘CF_Code’, ‘CODE10’, ‘CF_CODE10’, ‘UCODE10’, ‘CF_UCODE10’, ‘ECODE10’, and ‘CF_ECODE10’ in RTMMS)
• “Description” (‘Term Description’ in RTMMS)
• “Systematic Name” (‘Systematic Name’ in RTMMS)
• “Common Term” (‘Common term’ in RTMMS)

It should also be noted that the RTMMS does not replace the published standards when creating an ISO/IEEE-11073-compliant medical device:

[…] You are reminded that this system is not a substitute for published IEEE Health Informatics Device Interoperability standards. RTMMS is a tool to aid in the implementation of these standards. Implementors should always obtain and consult the published standards. [RTMMS Login]

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snomed-ct

For the use of SNOMED CT, the licensing terms of SNOMED International must be observed. An Affiliate License is required to use SNOMED CT. Further information can be found on the website of SNOMED International; the affiliate license can be obtained from the German National Release Center at the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM) here. The current license terms are also available there.

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tho

Resources provided by the HL7 International Vocabulary Work Group are made available in the HL7 Terminology (THO) Implementation Guide. This ImplementationGuide is subject to the CC0 license 🔗.

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ucum

To use UCUM, the license terms of the Regenstrief Institute must be observed. In particular, section 3 of the license terms is pointed out:

• a. You may not:
  
  1. use the Work for the purpose of developing or promulgating a different standard for identifying units of measure;
     
  2. use the Work in any way which may dilute the Work’s purpose of providing a definitive standard for identifying precisely defined, unambiguous units of measure in electronic documents and messages;
     
  3. use the Work in any way that expressly or implicitly change its meaning;
     
  4. add, delete, or modify the Work’s content including field names, field contents, descriptions, and comments; or
     
  5. use the Work to create Derivative Works.
     
• b. Attribution.
  
• c. If you reproduce or distribute copies of the Work in its entirety, including but not limited to reproduction or distribution in connection with a Software Application, You must:
  1. provide the following with the Work: a. a copyright notice; b. a notice that refers to this License; c. a notice that refers to the disclaimer of warranties; and d. the text of or the URL or hyperlink to, this Copyright Notice and License. ii. You may satisfy the conditions in Section 3(b) in any reasonable manner based on the medium, means, and context in which You exercise the Licensed Rights. For example, it may be reasonable to satisfy the conditions by providing a URL or hyperlink that includes the required information when distributing the Work by electronic download.

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unvailable

We use this tag to label resources that are currently not (freely) available due to licensing conditions, or that may not be distributed. Usually, the resource indicates why it is not available.

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unvailable

We use this tag to label resources that do not fall under a clear license. However, it can be assumed that the copyright holders have agreed to the use of these resources for research purposes due to the context in which they are distributed.