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: European Register of Marine Species (ERMS) World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) Fauna Europaea Euro+Med PlantBase The Freshwater Animal Biodiversity Assessment (FADA) However, after the company was un-incorporated in 2014, it became clea
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.