Re: Can you own the number 10.5% ?

On Mon, 1 Feb 1999, John R. Levine <johnl[_at_]iecc.com> wrote:
>
> 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. 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.

John,

So Ibbotson Associates pretends to have a copyright on the 10.5% figure?

Fine, I personnally have a copyright on 100% and 3.14159 !

You said it : 10.5% is a fact, and copyright only protects original creations. I don't think that there is enough creativity in the 10.5% figure, whatever efforts had been made to calculate it.

Ibbotson may have a copyright on a study, book or report they made on long term return on stocks, but not on a simple figure.

Regards,

Cyril Pierre-Beausse
<cyril.pierre-beausse[_at_]ipr-helpdesk.org> Received on Wed Feb 03 1999 - 08:24:56 GMT