RE: Owner of Dewey Decimal System Sues Library-Themed Hotel

["Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>]

I agree with Rick.

I guess we are all supposed to forget how the Dewey decimal system has
been used, abused, sworn at and praised for over 100 years. In classes, at
work, cribbed with Sears, etc. Used for cross-walks if I recall
correctly-- (sounds like money for consultants as well as lawyers to me)
Explained ad-infinitum in library instruction guides, illustrated in fill
in the blank workbooks, maps, schematics, etc.

And since when do they charge libraries everytime they classify a book, Is
there some kind of policing unit finding out if every dewey classed book
was classed using an approved copy-or even current copy? sheesh. Or that
it wasn't just classed because someone did it from memory.

I mean we are talking about something that until the 1980's was the
lifeblood of almost every professional librarian. We thought in it, we
dreamed or had nightmares in it, we explained it with homemade charts in
BI sessions, sheesh..We mapped where the dewey's would go when they were
reclassed to LC, and published such guides and studies, we have ALA's
great North American Title Shelf List Counts with conversion tables. Is
OCLC now claiming they own all rights for those conversion tables. I mean,
Dewey was a langauge, a math, a geography. When computerized catalogs
looked like they were on the way, librarians in Dewey libraries explained
how you could really find those books without a catalog anyway...that's a
language and way of thinking, not something that is owned by some entity.
If OCLC wins do they get to tell everyone who puts out a "dewey scheme" or
outline to destroy it?

I know I'm not the only MLS student who was taught to "walk" through the
universe of recorded knowledge through the Dewey scheme.

This case just makes librarians and their organizations look dumb and
dumber.  in my humble but probably dumb and misguided opinion.  Chuck

-----Original Message-----
From: Rick Anderson
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Sent: 9/25/03 7:39 PM
Subject: RE: Owner of Dewey Decimal System Sues Library-Themed Hotel

> The reason OCLC is filing against the Library Hotel is to protect their
> copyright status with regard to the Dewey Decimal System. If they do not
> challenge this unauthorized use, others with more malicious intent could
> challenge their copyright status. OCLC has offered to negotiate with the
> Library Hotel over this matter and they refuse.

What I keep wondering is how OCLC can claim the DDS as a functional
trademark when so many organizations (i.e. libraries) use it freely
without any acknowledgment of OCLC whatsoever.  It seems to me that if I
were to go around selling facial tissue and calling it Kleenex, the
Kimberly-Clark Corporation would have a clear trademark case against me
--
unless it had been permitting other people to do the same thing for
fifty years, in which case a judge would laugh at them for suddenly 
deciding to bring suit against me.  Isn't that the situation OCLC finds 
itself in now?

If so, that would explain why the Library Hotel wasn't interested in
signing a document acknowledging OCLC's right to give (or, by implication,
to deny) permission to use the DDS.  It seems to me that they have a good
chance of winning the court fight over the trademark issue; they'd be
blowing the game early if they stipulated contractually that they're using
the DDS by OCLC's good graces.

Somebody who knows the law in these matter can probably put these
questions to rest; I'm well out of my area of expertise.

-------------
Rick Anderson
rickand@unr.edu