Word: coops
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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We’re not sure what “intellectual property” right the Coop has in mind, but it’s none that we recognize. Nor is it one that promotes the progress of science and useful arts, as copyright is intended to do. While intellectual property may have become the fashionable threat of late, even in the wake of the Recording Industry Association of America’s mass litigation campaign the catch-phrase—and the law—has its limits...
...Supreme Court tells us that “[t]he sine qua non of copyright is originality.” That’s why the compilers of a white-pages telephone directory lost their claims against a competitor who copied listings. The Coop neither authored the ISBN numbers on its books nor compiled them in an original selection or arrangement. From all accounts, the professors who create course reading lists are happy for students to have them. (Professors generally welcome anything that helps students to do their course assignments...
What about the prices that the Coop set and affixed to books? Copyright doesn’t protect the “sweat of the brow” involved in compiling facts, either: “[C]opyright rewards originality, not effort.” Nor does it give monopoly control of minimally expressive statements (for example, a book’s price) that “merge” with the underlying idea (for example, its market value). A federal appeals court recently denied the New York Mercantile Exchange’s bid to protect its list of stock...
...copyright’s aim. While some courts have protected the creativity of price estimates, they haven’t allowed companies to exclude others from learning market prices or catalog part numbers. CrimsonReading.org, which offers price comparisons built around the book lists gathered from professors and the Coop, furthers copyright’s goals of sharing access to information...
...recognize that the Coop can kick anyone they want out of its store—although even the Cambridge police seemed to think the Coop was taking things a bit too far. If they call again, the Coop’s managers might want to come up with a better reason than “intellectual property” or risk marring the intellectual face of Harvard. And Harvard might want to re-think its relationship with an institution that seems to put its own profit margin ahead of its students’ access to information...