Re: Can you own the number 10.5% ?

On Mon, Feb 01, 1999, John R. Levine <johnl[_at_]iecc.com> wrote:
>
> 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?
>
> 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.

In addition to being a fact, it's also too short to be protected by copyright.

And even if it was a trade secret once, it isn't any more. So it seems to me that the only way someone could claim that the number is "proprietary" is if they could show it is somehow a trademark... that is a source indicator uniquely associated with their company.

Bob Cumbow
cumbr[_at_]perkinscoie.com
206-583-8566 Received on Tue Feb 02 1999 - 20:16:55 GMT