A recent thread on the US postal code/ZIP code systems made me wonder about this. The Postal Service has created the system assigning a code to any location in the country, meant to make it easier to get the mail where it’s supposed to get. It seems that other carriers like FedEx, or UPS use them for their enterprises as well. Has the Postal Service as creator of the scheme any intellectual property right that would enable it to ban others from using it, or at least to demand pay from them, or is it in some kind of public domain that allows everybody to use the scheme?
An analogy are the two big library classification schemes used in the US. The Dewey Decimal System is trademarked and they also (but dubiously) claim a copyright. See this article. OTOH, the Library of Congress system is not protected since it is produced by the US govt… Basically, all documents, maps, etc. produced by the US govt. are not protected under IP laws. (But you can get into trouble with inappropriate use of a US govt. designation. E.g., using an FDA approval logo when you don’t have one. But that’s fraud, not a trademark abuse. Ditto publishing “Top Secret” documents and the like is not an IP issue.)
Since the zipcode system was developed by the USPS while it was an official govt. department, it has to be free to use, etc., as far as IP laws go.
But vice versa does not hold. Roger Myers Jr. sued the USPS for copyright infringement since “Mr. Zip” is an obvious rip-off of his father’s “Manic Mailman”. wink
The ZIP code system is indeed public domain, but you have to fork over some bucks to get the big book of ZIP codes from the USPS. They publish a new one every year, I think.
A certain large university numbers its buildings according to it’s zip+ code.