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Hotel Being Sued for Using the Dewey Decimal System
cbull writes "Did you know the Dewey Decimal System isn't in the public domain? The rights are owned by the Online Computer Library Center. They are suing the Library Hotel in New York for trademark infringement. In addition, according to the article, libraries pay at least $500/year to use the system."
Just one more reason to do away with an antiquated filing system.
Ryosen
One man's "Troll, +1" is another man's "Insightful, +1".
From the article:
"A person who came to their Web site and looked at the way (the hotel) is promoted and marketed would think they were passing themselves off as connected with the owner of the Dewey Decimal Classification system."
Don't you think that a person browsing the website might just think "Oh, they're a theme hotel"?
On the other hand, if libraries have to license it, then I guess that's how it works.
Most libraries moved to the Library of Congress classification system in the mid '80s. Dewey is still around in libraries for books added before the switchover.
What "rights" are they talking about here? That is, what sort of IP is being licensed?
Patents would make a sort of sense, but Dewy Decimal dates back to 1873, so it can't be a patent. Copyright doesn't seem to apply since there isn't obviously a "work" being copied.
What gives? Is it just a matter of the trademark?
My alma mater uses the Library of Congress system for numbering its books. Sure, it's not quite as simple for children to understand (a letter code, followed by numbers, then more letters), and is copyrighted, but as far as I know it's royalty-free to use.
"But always she's the spectre of uncertainty I first endured, then faded, then embraced..."
I think they trademarked the term "Dewey Decimal System". The objection isn't to the use of the system itself (even if it was patented, I doubt the patent would extend to hotel room clasification) it's that the website uses the term (or trademark) Dewey Decimal System all over it.
Ya but a lot of doctors and engineers of old didn't share, which is exactly why IP laws where created in the first place.
If you are the only doctor who knows how to cure something why tell your competition?! Just wait a noble gets sick and rake in the cash!
Or you know how to build the strongest lightest armor, are you gonna go publishing a howto our are you gong to keep it secret to yourself and your guild?
I think the point is that anything invented 130 years ago by someone who died 72 years ago damn well ought to be in the public domain by now, and the fact that it's not is a shining example of why drastic overhaul of so much IP law is desperately needed.
It's a trademark infringement case, not patent or copyright. Assuming that's the only issue, OCLC is not complaining that the hotel uses certain ranges of numbers to classify books (that would be patent infringement, but as the parent points out the patent would long since have expired), but that the hotel uses a trademarked term with Dewey in it in their advertising and promotion -- in effect, that they're making a profit off of OCLC's "brand". If I'm understanding this correctly, there would be no problem if the Library Hotel had used the same numbers with the same meanings, but had referred to it throughout as the Library Hotel Classification System or something like that. (They'd probably even have been fine if they'd said that it was "similar to the Dewey Decimal classification system. Dewey Decimal is a trademark of OCLC.")
Yes, it still seems kind of silly, but it's not the gross abuse of IP law or the ridiculous state of affairs that lots of respondents are taking it for. It's more as if I opened the Soup Hotel, and named all the floors after trademarked Campbell's Soup brand names. I'd be fine if I named the floors "Chicken and Rice" and "Beef Stew", but if I named them "Campbell's Mega Noodle" and "Campbell's Chicken & Stars" and used promotional material that talked about all the soup flavours you grew up with, and service as good as the soup you love, and that sort of thing, then you can bet Campbell's Soup would come after me if I didn't have a licensing agreement with them, because I'm profiting off of their trademark.
In fact, the fact that OCLC tried a couple of times to contact the hotel before pursuing legal action makes me think that they may mostly care about this because they don't want to lose the trademark (which can happen if you don't defend it and people start using it generically).
In this case, the hotel is using a trademark of OCLC, and it is just as clear-cut as if you were to start selling Twinkies and Ding-Dongs.
frob
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
In this case, the hotel is using a trademark of OCLC, and it is just as clear-cut as if you were to start selling Twinkies and Ding-Dongs.
Yes, it's completely clear-cut. The hotel is totally within their rights to call the system by its name. If they sell Smirnoff vodka in their bar, they can call it "Smirnoff". If they have CNN showing on a TV in the hall they can call it "CNN". If they have XBoxes in rooms, they can call them "XBoxes". And if they happen to use DDC for classification, they have the right to clearly say that. They do not claim their own hotel is DDC-hotel. They just say, in very plain language, that for every major category in DDC there is a floor in the hotel and for every secondary one there is a room. If the Library hotel used a different system and called it DDC, I could see the merit in this case, but they clearly use the correct DDC and so "Dewey Decimal System" the only correct way to call it.
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