Changes for Retailers wanting to use WA tasting notes

[Bill_Tex_Landreth]

@Bruce Leiserowitz

Does The Wine Spectator charge retailers an additional fee for permission to quote notes and scores?

By the way, I think it would be an interesting copyright question if a retailer merely used the numerical score, as opposed to the detailed tasting notes.

Bruce

They most certainly charge for inclusion on their Award of Excellence for restaurant wine lists and the little window sticker. So, I would imagine they charge for shelf takers and the ability to use points/reviews to sell wines.

[Richard_Leland]

@Randy Bowman

The Wine Advocate has begun notifying Retailers and Wineries that there will be a cost for and requirements to post WA tasting notes on their websites. The user will also have standard guidelines for displaying the notes on their websites, brochures and flyers.

Hmmmm - I wonder if “brochures and flyers” includes shelf talkers? I’ve never used them but a lot of retailers - especially those with untrained staff - rely on them heavily.

[Bruce_Leiser_owitz]

@Richard Leland

@Randy Bowman

The Wine Advocate has begun notifying Retailers and Wineries that there will be a cost for and requirements to post WA tasting notes on their websites. The user will also have standard guidelines for displaying the notes on their websites, brochures and flyers.

Hmmmm - I wonder if “brochures and flyers” includes shelf talkers? I’ve never used them but a lot of retailers - especially those with untrained staff - rely on them heavily.

And, of course, many of the shelf talkers you see in some retail stores are prepared by the distributor(s) and not by the retailer.

In any event, I would be interested to know what The Wine Spectator’s actual practice is on this topic. Do they require some special commercial subscription/license in order to put their scores and/or tasting notes on brochures, flyers, shelf talkers, websites, etc.?

Bruce

[C_Bowman]

Bruce,
I’ve not heard of WS having any special subscription. I get emails from them and there hasn’t been any mention. I was surprised to learn about the change at WA on twitter from a friend, I get emails from WA for everything else but never got one for this announcement, I have no idea when it was implemented.

It will be interesting to see how distributors, big retailers and wineries handle this. In the FAQ’s on WA there is a list of the included content and how it should be used/published.

[Ken_V]

Carrie, it showed up in my inbox at 7pm yesterday EDT. It was one of their standard “announcements” emails. I’ll forward it to you.

[C_Bowman]

After being mentioned on FB that it isn’t there anymore, I went to WA and it doesn’t show if you click subscribe, maybe they’re making some changes. Who knows!!

[David_K_o_l_i_n]

@Todd F r e n c h

@Mel Hill

No problem, happy to voluntarily contribute a bit of time to keep you informed!

FIFY

Cold

[Peter_Tryba]

@Bill Tex Landreth

@Bruce Leiserowitz

Does The Wine Spectator charge retailers an additional fee for permission to quote notes and scores?

By the way, I think it would be an interesting copyright question if a retailer merely used the numerical score, as opposed to the detailed tasting notes.

Bruce

They most certainly charge for inclusion on their Award of Excellence for restaurant wine lists and the little window sticker. So, I would imagine they charge for shelf takers and the ability to use points/reviews to sell wines.

No additional charge past the regular subscription fee for shelf talkers et al.

[CFu]

@Bruce Leiserowitz

Does The Wine Spectator charge retailers an additional fee for permission to quote notes and scores?

By the way, I think it would be an interesting copyright question if a retailer merely used the numerical score, as opposed to the detailed tasting notes.

Bruce

can’t copyright a number. Well unless it’s a uniquely created number. Good luck getting that score WA

[M.Kaplan]

Does anyone know if Parker/TWA claims to have copyrighted all numerals from 1 to 100, or only those from 85 to 100?

Hasn’t Parker ‘scored’ some wines “100+”, thus rendering his “proprietary 100 point scale” a nullity?

[Ken_V]

@M.Kaplan

Does anyone know if Parker/TWA claims to have copyrighted all numerals from 1 to 100, or only those from 85 to 100?

[Robert.Fleming]

@Charlie Fu

@Bruce Leiserowitz

By the way, I think it would be an interesting copyright question if a retailer merely used the numerical score, as opposed to the detailed tasting notes.

can’t copyright a number.

While it’s true you can’t copyright a number, you can prevent unauthorized commercial exploitation of a name.

How good is “100” on a shelf talker if it doesn’t say who awarded the score?

[Ken_V]

@Robert.Fleming

@Charlie Fu

@Bruce Leiserowitz

By the way, I think it would be an interesting copyright question if a retailer merely used the numerical score, as opposed to the detailed tasting notes.

can’t copyright a number.

While it’s true you can’t copyright a number, you can prevent unauthorized commercial exploitation of a name.

How good is “100” on a shelf talker if it doesn’t say who awarded the score?

Perhaps they can write “100 points from you know who”?

[Bruce_Leiser_owitz]

@Peter Tryba

No additional charge past the regular subscription fee for shelf talkers et al.

Peter–That was my recollection from a long, long time ago, but I didn’t know if had changed over the years. As far as I can remember, WS didn’t have a separate commercial subscription or license for
someone to use their ratings/reviews.

Bruce

[Bruce_Leiser_owitz]

@Charlie Fu

can’t copyright a number. Well unless it’s a uniquely created number. Good luck getting that score WA

Charlie–My assumption is that the Wine Advocate wouldn’t claim a copyright in a particular score–e.g, 93 points. My quick sense is that that would be far too generic to withstand copyright scrutiny.

Instead, they would have to claim copyright in the unique expression of that score: “93 points Wine Advocate,” or “93 points Robert Parker.” I’m not aware that such as claim has been tested in court, but
I haven’t done any specific research on that.

Bruce

[CFu]

I don’t think it’s a copyright since that exact combination of wording is never put into their journal. At least it don’t think it looks like that on their newsletter.

[Robert_Pollard-Smith]

‘Rated 93 points by a formerly highly-regarded ex-Maryland-based wine publication’ ?

[Robert_Pollard-Smith]

BTW, Keith Akers mentioned at Thursday’s pre-B-Fest gathering at Half Acre that WA is going to want a commercial subscription for each individual PC in their stores.

[C_Bowman]

If you are sharing an acct or try to log in from more than one computer you get this

Under the terms of your Subscription Agreement “You may not access the information from more than one computer at any given time”. Our monitoring software has detected a situation of multiple concurrent logins. If you feel we’re in error, please contact support to resolve the situation. If you are using multiple computers simultaneously you will need to obtain a seperate user account for each of them."

[Peter_Kleban]

No cheating, Carrie! Tsk, tsk!!