Could a charity manufacture patented medications for free? Let's say there is a patented medication that is very effective and very expensive at the pharmacy, say $1,000/dose. But also assume that the medicine only costs $1 to formulate - most of the "cost" was in the research. I understand that a competing company cannot legally manufacture and sell a patented medicine to consumers. However, could a nonprofit legally manufacture and give away the patented medicine for free?
No, they could not. The conditions of violating a patent don't revolve around monetary gain, so regardless of compensation they would be in violation of the patent.
No You are limited to “your ... use only”. You are not given permission to make this available for 3rd parties either commercially or for free.
On what grounds would you sue? Contract Well, I think that you would struggle to find the necessary elements (see What is a contract and what is required for them to be valid?) In particular, you would struggle to prove that there was intention to create legal relations on their part and possibly on yours. Are you able to identify in your "back &amp; forth" a clear, unequivocal offer and acceptance? Without knowing the details of the "back &amp; forth": I was hoping that someone at $organization might be willing to write an article explaining what you do, the history of the organization and how it works appears on the face of it to be a request for a gift; not an offer to treat. Promissory Estoppel If you don't have a contract then it is possible (IMO unlikely) that they induced you by your actions to commit resources (your time in writing) in anticipation of a reward (them publishing what you wrote). To be estopped they would have to have known that you were writing the article in the expectation that it would have your organisation's name in it, that they did not intend for that to happen and that they allowed you to invest those resources notwithstanding. If you can prove all of that then you can require them to do what they promised. The big difficulty I see in this is did you tell them that a) you were writing the article, b) it would have your name in it and c) you expected it to be published in that form. Copyright If they publish the work or a derivative work without your permission you can sue for breach of copyright. As it stands, they probably have an implied licence to publish and you would need to explicitly revoke that. Options There are two reasons to go to court: Money Principle If you are going to court for money then this is at best a risky investment and at worst a gamble: balance your risk and reward carefully. If you are going to court for a principle then I simultaneously admire your principles and think you're an idiot. Make a deal Explain that the reason that you wrote the article was a) to support their fine publication and the fantastic work it does (even if you don't) and b) to garner good publicity for your organisation. You understand and admire their strong editorial stance (especially if you don't) but the article involved a considerable amount of work and could they see their way clear to give you a significant discount (~80%) on a full page ad facing the article.
Some MP3 technologies are still under patent in the US: you can read the wiki page on that matter to see if it is applicable to what you intend to do. This assumes you write your own code – if you use someone else's conversion software, that would depend on the licensing terms for the software.
Can an idea be a trade secret? Certainly -- most trade secrets are ideas. The thing is, unlike copyright, patents, or trademarks, trade secret isn't a very strong form of protection. Trade secret legislation only protects against certain "unfair" methods of obtaining the secret. Independent invention is perfectly fine: if I figure out on my own what the secret formula for Coca-Cola is, there's nothing the Coca-Cola company can do to stop me. Reverse engineering is also fine: if I take a bottle of Coke to a chemistry lab and analyze the ingredients, there is again nothing the Coca-Cola company can do. Additionally, a company wishing to make something a trade secret needs to take active steps to preserve that secret. Continuing the Coca-Cola example, they might require anyone reading the formula to first sign an agreement to not disclose what they read.
At least in the United States (and I'm pretty sure this is true around the world), facts and information cannot be copyrighted. Just because a work is copyrighted, doesn't mean every part of that work is copyrighted, and factual information conveyed by the work is a part which is not subject to copyright. Copyright on a collection of facts is limited to the selection and arrangement of those facts, and only if that selection and arrangement has some bare minimum amount of originality. See Feist v. Rural, 499 U.S. 340. In this case, it looks at first glance like the person who made that site made their own selection of which materials and which sources would be included; the one place where they really seem to have copied their selection is from glass catalogs with datasheets from specific manufacturers, who would have a hard time arguing that "everything we manufacture in this widely-recognized class of substances" is an original selection. What the author of the website has done is relinquish his rights in his selection and arrangement of the data. In some places, there are other rights besides copyright that do apply to databases; for instance, the EU recognizes database rights to protect significant investment in compiling a database of stuff. But the US does not have that concept. For citing stuff, that's not really a legal question, and has more to do with academic standards. Ask your adviser or teacher if you have one.
A document can be distributed under more than one license. Just because it has been made available under a CC license for free, doesn't mean that IEEE can't negotiate a different license with different terms that allow them to sell the content. (This is similar to the way that a software library can be available for free under a license that permits non-commercial use, but also be made available for a fee for commercial use.) If you want to know whether IEEE is legally selling Aaron Swartz's manuscript, you can contact Morgan &amp; Claypool, the publisher that owns the copyright, and ask them whether this use by IEEE has been authorized by them. For the other documents you mention, contact MIT Press. Etc.
In the UK sodium thiopental is a controlled substance, it is licensed for use as a general anaesthetic (and I think it has other medical purposes). Your quoted passages refer to the so-called 'export ban'. Following campaigning by, among others, Alistair Carmichael MP and Reprieve, the UK Government prohibited export of the drug without authorisation. In applying for an export licence for the drug you must persuade the Government that it is not intended for use in capital punishment. The campaigners sought to prevent exports of drugs used in lethal injections. Previously the Government had said it would not ban exports of sodium thiopental because it is a medicine with legitimate medical purposes and in any case could be obtained from other countries, e.g. (in the particular case below) Austria, so a ban would make no difference to the USA's supply but it would harm UK business. Nevertheless the Government maintained its opposition to the death penalty in all circumstances. That decision was challenged by judicial review - the claimants said the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills had "acted unlawfully in refusing to exercise his powers under the Export Control Act 2002 to make an order prohibiting its export to the United States". If I understand correctly the judicial review failed on two of the three grounds and decision was deferred on the last ground; subsequently the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, Vince Cable, changed his mind as it had emerged the export's purpose was solely for use in lethal injections and the Government had after all committed to oppose the death penalty. The Queen (on the application of Zagorski and Baze) Claimants - v - Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and Archimedes Pharma UK Ltd EWHC 3110 (Admin)[2010] http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2010/3110.html https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-bans-export-of-lethal-injection-drugs-to-the-us