Company Challenges ALA's Use of "READ"

Staff -- School Library Journal, 8/1/1999

The celebrity posters are safe, but from now on librarians better watch their step on other uses of the word "read" or, rather, "READ." It turns out that the Weekly Reader Corporation holds a trademark on READ, and the company recently told ALA to quit using the word on its graphics catalog or anything else that looks like a magazine.

The problem arose shortly after ALA issued its spring 1999 graphics catalog. The cover of last spring's issue happens to use READ in the style of a magazine masthead across the top. Weekly Reader's lawyers sent a letter to ALA Executive Director William R. Gordon telling the association to "cease and desist" from using READ that way again. Gordon says he was surprised by the letter and that ALA's lawyers were still drafting a response.