Antedating of "Metadata" in Another Sense

[Fred Shapiro]

The following earlier usage of _metadata_, as described in Wikipedia,
should probably be noted in the OED's entry for that word:

It was the summer of 1969 when Jack E. Myers coined the term "metadata",
and a 1973 product brochure where he first used it in print. He
intentionally designed it to be a term with no particular meaning. A data
and publication search at that time did not discover any prior use either
of the word "metadata" or "meta data". The word Metadata was registered in
1986 as a trademark (U.S. Trademark Registration No. 1,409,206) belonging
to The Metadata Company. The trademark was granted incontestable status in
1991. Metadata is a proprietary mark which stands for The Metadata
Company.

The Metadata Company has since attempted to threaten people legally into
not using the word "metadata" in the generic sense. Many people believe
that due to the widespread use of the word "metadata" in the generic sense
as "data about data", it is likely that the "Metadata" trademark has
entered the public domain by becoming a general term. This was the legal
opinion expressed by the Office of the Solicitor of the United States
Department of the Interior to the Federal Geographic Data Committee when
the latter was threatened by Metadata's lawyers for its use of the word
"metadata" in a generic sense. However, no judge has as yet ruled the
trademark invalid.

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS
   Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press
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