Dear taxonomic editor, dear SMEBD member,

The SMEBD council would like to officially inform you that the Society for the Management of Electronic Biodiversity Data (SMEBD) has been dissolved by decision of the council. SMEBD undertook for several years the role of guardian of the IPR rights of these databases:

However, after the company was un-incorporated in 2014, it became clear for council that SMEBD was no longer able to fulfill that role.

The council decided that it is in the best interest of the editor communities that this activity of IPR guardian be transferred to the respective database management boards, and to that end the copyrights on the databases were transferred to the respective boards.

The contract ‘Standard agreement with a contributor’ that you may have signed with the society is here by discontinued.
In practice this should have no noticeable implication on your relation with the aforementioned databases.

In case of questions please contact us at info@smebd.eu or the host institutes of the databases.

Sincerely,
The SMEBD council
2015-04-17