Library Hotel Sued for Using Dewey
September 24th, 2003Jeffrey and I were married at the Library Hotel, one of the many small boutique hotels that have popped up all over Manhattan in the last few years. Each floor of the hotel is named for one of the ten main headings in the Dewey Decimal System: general knowledge, math and science, philosophy and psychology, medicine and technology, religion and mythology, arts and entertainment, social science and folklore, literature, language, and geography & history.
Rooms are named for subdivisions of their floor’s main category. On the Math and Science floor, for example rooms are named for mathematics, geology, zoology, botany, dinosaurs, and astronomy.
Now the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) is suing the Library Hotel for its unlicensed use of Dewey. OCLC, a non-profit organization, has owned the Dewey system since 1988.
How a stylish Manhattan hotel’s light-hearted use of Dewey might harm the trademark is lost on me at the moment. One has only to look at the unfortunate Librarian Action Figure, whose weapon of choice is the Dewey Decimal System, to see how Dewey and the profession would benefit from more products like the Library Hotel.