Our friends at the UK JISC have just issued a very useful new report titled "Value and Benfits of Text Mining" which looks at some of the early applications of text mining, particularly in the context of the scholarly literature, and the technical, economic, and legal barriers to large scale use of text mining technologies. Of particular interest is the analysis of text mining as a means of accelerating innovation and discovery across a wide range of sectors and some of the related economic considerations. The coverate of copyright here actually include a discussion of possible future changes in copyright law  (perhaps in the context of the Hargreaves review of intellectual property law that is under discussion in the UK) to facilitate text mining technologies.

The report can be found at

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/reports/2012/value-and-benefits-of-text-mining.aspx

Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI