Updated October 23, 2008

The College of American Pathologists (CAP) publishes and owns the copyright in the CAP Cancer Protocols (the Protocols). The CAP hereby authorizes use of exact copies of the Protocols by physicians and other health care practitioners in reporting on surgical specimens for individual patients, in teaching, and in carrying out medical research for non-profit purposes.

The CAP also authorizes physicians and other health care practitioners to make modified versions of the Protocols solely for their individual use in reporting on surgical specimens for individual patients, teaching, and carrying out medical research for non-profit purposes.

The CAP further authorizes the following uses by physicians and other health care practitioners, in reporting on surgical specimens for individual patients, in teaching, and in carrying out medical research for non-profit purposes:

(1) Dictation from the original or modified protocols for the purposes of creating a text-based patient record on paper, or in a word processing document.
(2) Copying from the original or modified protocols into a text-based patient record on paper, or in a word processing document.
(3) The use of a computerized system for items (1) and (2), provided that the Protocol data is stored intact as a single text-based document, and is not stored as multiple discrete data fields.

Other than uses (1), (2), and (3) above, the CAP does not authorize any use of the Protocols in electronic medical records systems, pathology informatics systems, cancer registry computer systems, computerized databases, mappings between coding works, or any computerized system without a written license from CAP. Applications for such a license should be addressed to the SNOMED Terminology Solutions division of the CAP.

Any public dissemination of the original or modified Protocols is prohibited without a written license from the CAP.