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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."
i would like to copyright all the prime numbers.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Just one more reason to do away with an antiquated filing system.
Ryosen
One man's "Troll, +1" is another man's "Insightful, +1".
Next thing you know, someone's going to start charging for Linux.
Oh, wait...
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Dewey Decimal for Law books. They're gonna need it.
Hmm... from what I've found out about DDC, it seems like my school library uses it.
r o.pdf
I really doubt they have a license. And there's no way to find out until tuesday... I can't wait!
Oh, and here's a nice intro on DDC:
http://www.oclc.org/dewey/versions/ddc22print/int
(Why is there a space between the 'r' and 'o'?)
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.
How can you trademark the Dewey Decimal System? Sounds more like a patentable system to me... So how did it get filed under the trademark category? (Nice to know they've registered it under the one class of IP which never expires as long as you pay. I mean, look, it says it was created in 1873!)
Does this mean that I'll have to pay if organise my book collection according to Dewey system?
Hewey and Lewey got to say about this ?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
"Don't you know the Dewey Decimal System????"
CONAN THE LIBRARIAN!
Kick in the Head
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.
They really should use The Library of Congress' Classification -- it's currently in use by (most?) libraries, and no one owns a trademark on it!
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
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?
According to this page, Melvil Dewey (1851-1931) anonymously published the system in 1876.
On the other hand, it seems that the Online Compyter Library Center does do quite a bit of work to maintain the system, which should entitle them to some rights - but it sure seems that if some guy published something anonymously in 1876, he probably intended it to be in the public domain. Seems to me, if the hotel was based on the original system, and not the one improved by subsequent owners, he should be ok - especially if they referred to it as the "Melvil Dewey System" or something.
I had no idea it was owned - how come they aren't going after the elementary schools that teach the system? Or is that included in their library's license? And how come we're teaching a proprietary, trademarked system? Next thing you know, they'll be teaching our kids Windows!!!
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
"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."
Yeah, right. If I was particularly jetlagged, drunk or whatever, I might pop up to the counter and ask to speak to Melvil Dewey. But I'm sure I'm not alone in that I never even considered that a numeric system invented in the next-to-previous century would still be owned today, much less that anyone who used it would be representative of that owner.
It's lucky that I'm ambivalent about my primary school; when I was there, I organised the books according to the Dewey system. If I were at all bitter, I'd rat them out, and not just becuase the 098 section was completely empty.
Oh, and here's something funny. In my research for this comment, I typed 'dewey 098' into google to see if it still meant what I thought it did.
098 is for forbidden books. Now that you know that google for 'dewey 098' while you're feeling lucky.
Anything from before the 1920s should be in the public domain, even if nothing after that will ever go into the public domain. I mean, was there indeed some perpetual copyright clause slipped into some bill or another? How could anybody otherwise still own the rights to this?
I'm not being some sort of commu-terrorist, I'm trying to figure this out. The Dewey system was invented in the 1870s. It's something around 130 years old. How can it POSSIBLY still have its rights tied up? I thought until around 1930 our Congress was still rational enough to see that having things going to the Public Domain was a good thing.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
i like the erotica package detailed on their site.. sounds pretty good.. i dont think my girlfriend's parents would too much approve of us utilizing such facilities though and it probably costs more than the $2 that belongs to me. college. blah.
No, just for the letters "S" "C" and "O".
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 had the same reaction.
If the Dewey Decimal system is copyrighted, the copyright should have expired.
If it's patented, it should have expired.
And if it's trademarked, there shouldn't be any problem, since they don't call themselves the "Dewey Decimal Hotel."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I cannot understand why american companies are in this suing fury about copyright/trademark infringement.
It is really sad to see the world of business going this way.
They should try to look at it from a new angle and see the benefits they could have in a joint venture or by adopting a new business model.
How on Earth did they pick the damages amount for this case?
...
From the CNN story
"The complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Columbus seeks triple the hotel's profits since its opening or triple the organization's damages, whichever is greater, from the hotel's owner."
"Dreitler said Saturday he and his client do not yet know the size of the hotel's profits. The center, based in Dublin, is willing to settle with the hotel's owners, he said."
If this does not scream frivolous lawsuit (or lottery ticket lawsuit) then I don't know what does. I thought if you were suing someone for "damages" that you had pick an amount, not just claim "triple whatever is going to get me the most money".
This is more proof that the legal system in the US is severely broken and abused.
oke. Back to subject. This leads me to the next question. How much sense does it make to make libraries pay for one more thing? And will the next step be to raise this license fee? Most libraries are struggling along as it is, so i hope not. There isn't enough storage and there isn't enough funding, and it drives me crazy to see book sales held sometimes, in those cases where it's just because there's no way to maintain the full shelves.
Let me rephrase this. Most libraries are non-profit entities. Five bucks a year isn't a lot of money, but it's money being charged for a standard system that would take a lot of time and effort to shift away from. Maybe derivative works should be allowed; if a hotel is using it for anything other than books, maybe it should be hailed as an innovative way to make people more aware of the system itself. But i'm willing to accept that the system 'owners' may have the legal right to collect... it's the obsessive nature of this particular instance that bothers me. *shrug* i could be way off-base.
So... the most important point here, i think, is: What's a better way? And how can we make it free to libraries and other non-profits?
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
Even if the complaint was reasonable, the damages being sought are beyond absurd. Triple the profits the hotel has made since it opened? First, I can't imagine how the OCLC was damaged beyond the loss of revenue they would have gotten from a license. Second, I can't imagine that every cent of profit the hotel made over the last three years was a direct result of their use of the Dewey Decimal system. Perhaps some of it came from, I dunno, being conveniently placed in the middle of New York?
It would only make sense that they should have to prove that every customer who stayed there wouldn't have were it not for their use of the Dewey Decimal system.
It sounds like this non-profit actually serves a useful purpose, but I really hope that if this goes to court, their damages get capped at around $4500 (triple the money the hotel saved by not buying a license).
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
It's the Library of Congress system, for reasons which should be fairly self explanatory. When I was in high school and during the summers in college, I worked at my local library. During about 4-5 years of time, I and several other people went about the arduous task of methodically stripping the plastic protector off of each hardcover's dust jacket, peel the Dewey Decimal label off, apply the correct LOC label, doublecheck that the right LOC label was applied, put a new plastic covering on the dust jacket (harder than you may think) and reshelve it in the constantly expanding and moving LOC section. All the while with confused patrons complaining because they're utterly used to the old Dewey method and the new fangled thing is throwing them for a loop. They spent FAR more than $500/year doing this switchover, just on how much they paid me on any given year I was there.
Support your local library, btw, even in the days of the Patriot Act. Librarians are good people, and get a bad rap for being boring that they just don't deserve. Go browse around, most libraries have a few comfortable chairs for reading if you don't feel comfortable creating a record that you checked a particular book out. Never know what you might find in a library. Working at my library was one of the best times in my life.
The suit is for trademark infringement, not copyright or patent infringement.
In the U.S. Trademark rights can be held indefinitely by the registrant, or it's successors in interest as in this case, with timely filing of required paperwork and paying of appropriate fees.
What I find amusing is that the designer's of the hotel clearly did not do their homework. The research branch of the New York Public Library doesn't even use the Dewey system. It uses the Library of Congress categories. Here's the NYPL's online catalog. I guess the designer's went into the Library to look at the architecture, but didn't actually bother to call for a book, or even check the catalog. Had they, they wouldn't be in this pickle.
The closer you are to the code, the happier you are. - Ancient Geek Proverb
One reson that the DDC hasn't entered the Public Doman yet is that the ownrs kep puting out a new "verzon" every year or so. This is necesary from a clasification standpoint in that new things are neding to be clasified (in Dewey's day, it was a bit hard to imagin computer softwar neding to be put in a library). But it does mean that every tim a new version is published, it is given a seperat copyrit (since the content realy is diferent). A rough overview of the system can be sen her: http://www.tnrdlib.bc.ca/dewey.html Dewey was also a proponent of simplified speling: http://www.milton.k12.nh.us/Nute/melvil_dewey.htm# toc
At my college (CSU, Chico) the library uses the Library of Congress system. Anyone know if that is free? If it originated with the taxpayer-supported US Gov, I would think it should be free.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
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).
And if it's trademarked, there shouldn't be any problem, since they don't call themselves the "Dewey Decimal Hotel."
It's trademarked, and there is a problem because they are using the Dewey Decimal System name in their advertising without permission.
Oh, but DDC1, published 130 years ago by someone who died 72 years ago, is in the public domain now.
It's pretty useless if you want to classify 20th century history, or airplanes, or cars or computers. Relativity and Quantum, just where exactly in Physics should those go?
DDC22, on the other hand, is latest, fairly-up-to-date product of immense amounts of hard (and it must be said mind-blowingly boring) work by dedicated specialists who classified 110,000 new items last year, and will no doubt have to classify even more this year, and more the year after. Nobody's stopping you from using the 'invention' (a hierarchical classification scheme using numeric indicators), it's just the trademark and the copyrighted content of the Dewey implementation of this invention that's protected.
AFAIK, anything in a hundred year old Britannica is out of copyright, as are many early versions of Dewey. But the world moves on. And in the absence of de facto standards like DDC or LOC, every library would have to classify every new accession from first principles (as I say, both specialised, and mind-damagingly dull work), and there wouldn't be any consistency between libraries, which is a useful collateral bonus of the big schemes.
tomV
Initially I read the Slashdot comments only and was under the impression that the DDC's lawsuit may have some merit. But after visiting the hotel's site I was completely fucking outraged at the American IP legal climate...
Here is what I found. The hotel uses something which very much resembles the original DDC classification, which is in public domain. As the site states, "Each of the ten guestroom floors of the Library is dedicated to one of the ten major categories of the Dewey Decimal System: Social Sciences, Literature, Languages, History, Math & Science, General Knowledge, Technology, Philosophy, The Arts and Religion. Each of the sixty exquisitely appointed accommodations have been individually adorned with a collection of art and books relevant to one distinctive topic within the category of floor it belongs to.".
It's simply fucking insane that DDC is suing the hotel for that. I mean, WTF?! They claim trademark infridgement? They use the basic classification which is probably the same as original one, created 130 years ago and is now in public domain. If they use it, they are completely within their rights to call it "Dewey Decimal System" because that's what it is. And it's not like the hotel is in any competition with DDC. Nor any customers will be confused that the hotel is somehow affiliated with DDC. Stupid lawsuit and the whole concept of IP should be trashed. It's long overdue.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
What's the Dewey number for porn?
Whoops - they actually tell you: 800.001.
That's gotta be a great come on line for those sexy-looking librarians: "Hey babe, interested in some 800.001?"
Except that she'll probably come back with "Only in your 800.005."
a world in progress...
Its a cute hotel. My room was full of cool technology related books.
There appeared to be somesort of network connectivity in the rooms, but of course I forgot my laptop...
If God wants to take someone to court, he'll first have to create an attorney in his own image...
No, not even an omniscient God can comprehend the Law and court procedures.
They own the trademark on Dewey Decimal System and other words. They manage the numbering system. The actual numbering system can be used by anybody, although businesses (not public libraries) may need to pay roalties based on their uses of the system.
I never knew so many /. posters were so ignorant of trademark, service marks, patants, and copyright distinctions.
They can claim trademark violations because they are using the marks owned by OCLC without permission. It would be like some no-name snack company naming their products "Twinkies" and "Ding-Dongs". Now I'm off to paste this to all the others who don't bother to understand the law before spouting off about how bad it is.
frob
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Unlike patents, there is NO equivalent to prior art when it comes to trademark. Anyone can, at anytime, register a trademark on the most mundane thing or obvious thing. Trademarks -- unlike copyright and patents -- do not expire. It's the one thing that "creators" can be said to continuously own. An interesting application of this concept is the case of Tarzan. Created by Edgar Rice Burroughs in 1912, the work itself is now in the public domain. HOWEVER, Burroughs also had the forethought to register Tarzan as a trademark. That means a couple of things: 1) anyone can make a film adaptation of Tarzan of the Apes without having to pay money to the Burroughs estate; 2) no one can create *new* stories featuring the trademark protected character of Tarzan without they are licensed by same said Burroughs estate. The heirs of Conan Doyle were exceptionally displeased with things like Without a Clue and the Sherlock Holmes related stories on Star Trek: TNG, but since they had no legal protection, there wasn't a whole lot they could do about it. Now, this begs an interesting question -- how is it, exactly, that the Doyle estate (or anyone else) could not (or cannot) register Holmes and Watson as a trademark, but Forest Press could register "Dewey Decimal Classification" some 31 years after the death of Melvil Dewey, and almost 100 years after its creation? I haven't a clue...
check out the DDCS trademark filing.