LawMeme LawMeme Yale Law School  
LawMeme
Search LawMeme [ Advanced Search ]
 
 
 
 
Links: Hotel Sued for Using Dewey Decimal System
Posted by Steven Wu on Sunday, September 21 @ 22:13:26 EDT Trademark
The Library Hotel in New York is based on a cute conceit: "Each of the 10 guestrooms floors honors one of the 10 categories of the [Dewey Decimal System] and each of the 60 rooms is uniquely adorned with a collection of books and art exploring a distinctive topic within the category or floor it belongs to."

Too bad the hotel didn't check with the Dewey Decimal System's owners: the Online Computer Library Center. Now the OCLC is suing the Library Hotel for trademark infringement. Fortunately, the OCLC is willing to back down--if the hotel is willing to enter into a licensing agreement. (The OCLC will give the same answer if you ask them whether you can use the Dewey Decimal System on your website.)

Read the full story here.
 
Related Links
· More about Trademark
· News by Steven Wu


Most read story about Trademark:
Hermes Pursues Bag Copiers

Options

 Printer Friendly Page  Printer Friendly Page

 Send to a Friend  Send to a Friend

Threshold
  
The comments are owned by the poster. We aren't responsible for their content.

What? (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Monday, September 22 @ 03:59:14 EDT
Numbering systems can be trademarked? Well, I guess computers aren't the only place with over-protective "intellectual property" law.


[ Reply to This ]


Re: Hotel Sued for Using Dewey Decimal System (Score: 1)
by Sphere1952 on Monday, September 22 @ 09:07:49 EDT
(User Info | Send a Message)
I thought that if the public didn't recognise your mark in commerce you lost the trademark.

As far as I know, dewey decimal is a common noun.


[ Reply to This ]


Leges humanae nascuntur, vivunt, moriuntur
Human laws are born, live, and die

Contributors retain copyright interests in all stories, comments and submissions.
The PHP-Nuke engine on which LawMeme runs is copyright by PHP-Nuke, and is freely available under the GNU GPL.
Everything else is copyright copyright 2002-04 by the Information Society Project.

This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions
set forth in the Open Publication License, v1.0 or later.
The latest version is currently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/.

You can syndicate our news with backend.php



Page Generation: 0.209 Seconds