Can you own the number 10.5% ?

A friend of mine recently wrote a book about personal financial software. He mentioned in passing that the long term return on stocks is 10.5%, a number that he'd read in a newsletter from Vanguard. That number is widely cited in the press -- in a few minutes I found it on the web in an article in the Detroit News and a feature piece on family finance on Money Magazine's web site, with no citation of a source in either case.

Shortly after the book came out, his publisher received a letter from Ibbotson Associates, who he'd never heard of until that point, saying that the 10.5% number was theirs since they were the only people doing long-term analysis of market returns, that was a number they'd calculated, and he'd misappropriated their proprietary number. I don't know if they demanded a specific remedy or not.

It may well be the case that Ibbotson was the original source of the number, but I can't see how they have any claim on it. They can't copyright it since it's a fact, and it's well established that you can't copyright facts. It's not a trade secret, since it's not secret, it's published all over the place.

Am I missing something here?

Regards,
John Levine, johnl[_at_]iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47

PS: The obvious solution of getting a free or cheap license to make Ibbotson go away doesn't seem to be available, since they charge you $150 just to consider an application, before any licensing fee. Received on Mon Feb 01 1999 - 17:21:19 GMT