Don't Take Notes In the Bookstore

mikesd81 writes "The Harvard Crimson reports that the Harvard Coop asked Jarret A. Zafran to leave the store after writing down the prices of six books required for a junior Social Studies tutorial. The apparent new policy could be a response to Crimsonreading.org, an online database that allows students to find the books they need for each course at discounted prices from several online booksellers. The Coop claims the ISBN identification numbers in books are their intellectual property. Crimson Reading disagrees. 'We don't think the Coop owns copyright on this information that should be available to students,' said Tom D. Hadfield, co-creator of the site. The student paper reports that an unnamed intellectual property lawyer agreed with Crimson Reading's position."

Comments

ISBN's owned by no one

[Foofoobar]

Having worked as a publisher and having helped build the buying department for Amazon.com from 1995-1997, I can tell you that ISBN's are purchased by the publisher for association with their book. That number is never truly OWNED as it is recirculated once the book goes out of print; many books have the same ISBN but only one in print book at a time can use it. If a book wants to come back into print, it must be reissued another ISBN.

So in effect, ISBN's are owned by no one except for the distributing and maintaining body.

Re:ISBN's owned by no one

[Moridineas]

aka, ISBN-13. Transition to ISBN13 (which is compatible with UPC+EAN) is well under way, though I've noticed that you still primarily see the ISBN 10. In America, ISBN13's have a "978" prefix added for now, and a recalculated checksum (the last digit of the ISBN).

ISOwned

[Rob T Firefly]

ISBNs are nobody's intellectual property apart from the ISO. It's an international standard described by ISO TC 46/SC 9.

Re:Coop?

[porcupine8]

Coop members also get a profit share at the end of the year. And the bookstore part of the Coop is already associated with Barnes & Noble, as are 80% of college bookstores. (I don't think "owned" is the right phrase, I don't know how the relationship works.) But yeah, there are students on the Coop board who should probably be alerted to this so they can fight it.

ISBNs are the IP of:

[Algorithmnast]

ISBNs on books are the IP of The US ISBN Agency, and since they have the sole authority in the U.S. to issue ISBNs, it's a bit of a stretch (read: LIE) for any other legal entity to claim that the ISBN printed on the book are their IP.

If you prefer, you can ask The National Information Standards Organization, which will tell you the for country X it's organization Y. For instance, Canadians will use their own agency.

The desire to destroy competition is alive and well. Let's hope this is one attempt which fails miserably.

One Minor Correction

[eldavojohn]

...it is recirculated once the book goes out of print; many books have the same ISBN but only one in print book at a time can use it. One minor correction, from ISBN.org, I found:

ISBN CAN NEVER BE REUSED: Once an ISBN is assigned to a title, it CANNOT BE REASSIGNED even if the title goes out of print. In addition to being an order fulfillment tool, the ISBN is a bibliographic element in cataloging. It is printed on catalog cards, in catalogs and entered in national and international databases. So it always has to be the same book, it's never 'recycled.'

ISBNDB

[PlatyPaul]

I strongly suggest that you check out ISBNDB, which is an online database of ISBN numbers. You wouldn't have to go look up numbers in-person, thereby removing any possible blame from yourselves.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Coop attempted to challenge the ISBNDB, however....

What intellectual property?

[Experiment 626]

Intellectual property isn't a concept in the law in and of itself, the term is really more a way to spread nebulous FUD and also a convenience term to collectively speak about legal concepts that are separate but all deal with the notion that people can own ideas.

So what form of intellectual property exactly does the bookstore think the numbers fall under?/P>

They're not copyrighted. Even under modern, highly stretched definitions of creative works you can't copyright a number like that. What original expression of an idea does it represent? Not that someone wouldn't try it, people have even tried making claims as stupid as that the price of their merchandise is copyrighted.

They're not a trade secret. The numbers are printed right there on the book.

They're not a trademark. When someone sees "978-0-7356-1879-4" they don't think of this particular bookstore, which is good because that would make it really hard for other stores to sell the same book. Intel did try to trademark the number "486" and failed, which is why they started naming all their chips "Pentium" instead.

And, they're not patented. Even given the level of rubber-stamping the Patent Office does, I don't think "A system for designating a book with the number 978-0-7356-1879-4" would cut it. Maybe if you added "on the Internet" in there somewhere...

Re:Effort?

[srmalloy]

ISBNs are assigned in blocks to publisher's by a country's ISBN agency; the ISBN itself does not 'belong' to the publisher, it belongs to the International Standard Book Number Agency, although the publisher chooses which book to designate by each ISBN in the block it has been assigned. Publishers are not required to assign ISBNs to books; however, many retailers will decline to stock books that do not have an ISBN.