There are three (at least!) different issues:
1. use of DDC to classify your library
2. use of the name "Dewey" for the classification without giving the
trademark. That was the issue for the Library Hotel [1] and probably for
the issue below. OCLC has trademarked the word "Dewey" [2] in relation
to the classification as well as "Dewey Decimal Classification".[3]
3. the copyrighted text of the DDC, owned by OCLC
Note that the DDC text was copyrighted from the first edition, and for
much of its life the editions were copyrighted by Forest Press. Those
rights were most likely all transferred to OCLC.
kc
[1]
http://worldcat.org/arcviewer/2/OCC/2010/05/07/H1273247357646/viewer/file581.htm
[2] https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4807:akl2xm.2.37
[3] https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4807:akl2xm.2.39
On 4/14/21 7:49 AM, Guy Dobson wrote:
Approx 20 years ago I put together a website in which I cataloged websites
and classified them via both DDC and LC. If you want to browse books about
music just go to the 780s so why not organize URLs so that you can do the
same with them? I called it Surf with Dewey and got a gig talking about it
at PLA. I got a call from a woman at Forest Press informing me that I was
violating their copyright because my website listed Dewey numbers, along
with their descriptions, beyond the decimal point. Note that if you look
DDC up in Wikipedia it doesn't describe any numbers beyond the decimal
point. I was also told that I could not map Dewey to LC. I had to remove
the descriptions (no big deal: the titles of the websites provided a good
substitute) and was told that I had to put the copyright symbol next to the
word "Dewey" in my website's title and include a statement re the fact that
Forest Press owns the DDC. I changed the name of the website to Surf with
BCCLS.
*Guy Dobson*
Director of Technical Services & Systems Librarian
Drew University Library
<http://www.drew.edu/library?utm_source=FIL_Email_Footer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=FIL%2BEmail%2BFooter>
36 Madison Ave, Madison, NJ 07940
(973) 408-3207
On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 10:29 AM Kyle Banerjee <[email protected]>
wrote:
A couple quick thoughts:
- DDC isn't a structure in the same way that those other things are. DDC
defines a conceptual universe (portions of which are regularly
redefined)
as well as ways of navigating it. In this sense, the navigation has
more in
common with menuing and the content has more in common with something
like
an index or thesaurus
- DDC is owned by a giant library cooperative, so it makes more sense
for the libraries to simply make it publicly available than to look for
legal/technical loopholes to do the same. However, I've never been able
to
tell that stuff libraries own (particularly tools) is any more more open
than stuff they don't.
- DDC doesn't exist as a format per se, certainly not MARC which is
simply a container developed to ship info around on tape more than a
half
century ago.
kyle
On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 12:07 AM Jakob Voß <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi,
A colleauge of mine just pointed me to a detail of the court decision in
the case Google vs. Oracle. The Suppreme Court of the United States
ruled that reimplementation of Java API is no copyright violation but
allowed at least under fair use:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_Inc.
The opinion of the Court contains a remarkable section on page 6:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/18-956_d18f.pdf
"The second, less obvious, function is to reflect the way in
which Java’s creators have divided the potential world of
different tasks into an actual world, i.e., precisely which set
of potentially millions of different tasks we want to have
our Java-based computer systems perform and how we
want those tasks arranged and grouped. In this sense, the
declaring code performs an organizational function. It determines the
structure of the task library that Java’s creators have decided to
build. To understand this organizational system, think of the Dewey
Decimal System that categorizes books into an accessible system or a
travel guide that arranges a city’s attractions into different
categories"
Following this argument the Dewey Decimal System can be used as free as
the Java API. I think that we (library developers) already assumed for
specification of data formats, ontologies and data models but it also
applies to other kinds of knowledge organization systems (classification
schemes, thesauri, gazetteers...) including DDC. By the way if you know
systems not covered in BARTOC.org yet, please let the editors know so we
will add them!
I doubt that we can share the raw MARC data of DDC with all of its
details, but the class hierarchy, notations and headings (without
limitation of depth!) can be used freely as far as I understand the
court. Or am I missing something?
Cheers
Jakob
--
Jakob Voß <[email protected]>
Verbundzentrale des GBV (VZG) / Common Library Network
Platz der Goettinger Sieben 1, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
+49 (0)551 39-31031, http://www.gbv.de/
--
Karen Coyle
[email protected] http://kcoyle.net
m: +1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet/+1-510-984-3600
