Metadata is the name of a
US corporation
A corporation is an organization—usually a group of people or a company—authorized by the state to act as a single entity (a legal entity recognized by private and public law "born out of statute"; a legal person in legal context) and r ...
and a registered
trademark
A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from others ...
in the United States.
Though the term "metadata" has a common generic use in
information technology
Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology system (I ...
, claims of trademark have since brought about legal threats against its use in the generic sense.
History
The word Metadata was registered in 1986 as a trademark (U.S. Trademark Registration No. 1,409,206) belonging to The Metadata Company.. It was acknowledged that the term was first used in 1981 and the first commercial use tracked to 1982.
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
Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including:
* Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...
" 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
The Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) is a United States government committee which promotes the coordinated development, use, sharing, and dissemination of geospatial data on a national basis. Its 32 members are representatives from the E ...
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.
References
External links
Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Metadata Company, The
Companies based in Tennessee