OCLC owns the trademark to the Dewey Decimal System and charges libraries $500/year to use it. OCLC is suing New York's Library Hotel for organizing its 10 floors to correspond to the 10 Dewey categories and stocking individual rooms with books reflecting that category. OCLC seeks three times its own damages or three times the hotel's profits, whichever is greater. OCLC lawyer Joseph Dreitler said with a straight face that visitors to the hotel web site "would think [the hotel managers] were passing themselves off as connected with the owner of the Dewey Decimal Classification system." No, sir, no more than we think other hotel owners are passing themselves off as connected to the owner of the natural numbers. Also see the Slashdot discussion.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 9/22/2003 09:06:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
