"trap street", "trap town"; also "Chinese entries"

[George Thompson]

Remarkably, the OED seems to not have "ghost" as an entry in a bibliography
for a non-existent book, either.  Evans' Bibliography of American Imprints
to 1800 is full of ghosts, because Evans created entries for books he saw
advertised in colonial newspapers.  In some cases, though, these books were
never in fact published, or were published under a different title than the
one advertised.  I have also seen it stated that a bibliographer will
deliberately create a few ghosts, to catch out plagiarizers.
6 or 8 years ago, or more, there was a biographical encyclopedia of 18th
century philosophers published -- perhaps specifically British
philosophers.  I saw somewhere, most likely in TLS, a note on a long and,
as I recall, sufficiently preposterous entry on a great nonexistent
Scottish philosopher, which had been included as a limed twig for anyone
who might think that an unacknowledged condensed version of this work would
make a lot of money.
(I can identify this encyclopedia without much trouble, and might be able
to find the report of the ghost entry on the Scotsman, if there is a clamor
for it, which I hope there will not be.)

GAT

On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 2:42 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

> None of these are in the OED.
>
> "Trap street" (Wikipedia):  A trap street is a
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Fictitious_entry<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry>>fictitious
> entry in
> the form of a misrepresented
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Street<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street>>street
> on a
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Map <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map>>map,
> often outside the area the map
> nominally covers, for the purpose of "trapping" potential
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Copyright<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright>>copyright
> violators of the
> map, who will be unable to justify the inclusion of the "trap street"
> on their map. On maps that are not of streets, other
> "<http://en.wikipedia.org/**wiki/Copyright_trap<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_trap>>copyright
> trap"
> features (such as non-existent towns or mountains with the wrong
> elevations) may be inserted or altered for the same purpose."
>
> Googling Books:
>
> For "trap towns" + "fictitious"  --
>
> 1968: three instances, all relating to the same case (Reliance
> Guide):.  E.g., The Federal Reporter, Court of Claims, District of
> Columbia, Court of Appeals, snippet view.  "... Other compelling
> proof of infringement appears in defendant's copying of five of
> plaintiff's 50 new fictitious "trap" towns into the Reliance Guide,
> his use of plaintiff's guide in updating post office information in
> various states, ..."
>
> 1974: The Bulletin of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A, vol. 22,
> alleged 1974, snippet.  "Apparently, the defendant escaped liability
> because the trap towns accounted for only five out of some ninety
> thousand entries in his shipping rate directory. In Case 30, the
> plaintiffs included twelve fictitious models in their piston ..."
>
> For "trap street(s)" + "fictitious" --
>
> 1997: The United States Patents Quarterly, alleged 1997,
> snippet.  "... for detecting and demonstrating copying by showing
> that the fictitious entries also appear in the alleged infringer's
> work. ... Approximately 200 trap streets exist in ADC's maps in suit.
> ' The allegedly infringing Franklin Maps' ..."  [Seems like there
> should be earlier.]
>
> "Chinese entries" is alleged to be a term used to refer to fictitious
> data inserted into published books.  (Presumably of the same class
> and vintage as "Chinese fire drill", etc.)  Probably very difficult to
> trace.
>
> Joel
>
> ------------------------------**------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.

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