According to ScienceCommons.org, the world's largest protein database now has a Creative Commons license. This means it is free for use by the public, and is another step into the fight for Open Access. Please read the following statement from the Science Commons blog:
Uniprot.org, the world's most comprehensive catalog of information on proteins, is now using Creative Commons licensing. We spent a lot of time talking to the Uniprot folks over the last year. I'd encourage everyone to check out the FAQ we wrote on database licensing and Creative Commons licenses to understand exactly which elements of the database are copyrighted and which are not.
But the important thing is, as the terms state, you are now free to copy, distribute, display and make commercial use of these databases, provided you give credit where it's due. That means the data, the layouts, the entry sheets, everything. Congratulations to the Uniprot consortium and to Eric Jain.