Intellectual Reserve, Inc., A service provided by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?

Question

Earlier today another member cited a user-contributed FamilySearch tree and attributed it to:

© 2020 by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved. A service provided by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

I had not previously noticed this text on FamilySearch pages, but I see today that it is on the bottoms of pages all over FamilySearch.  I guess Intellectual Reserve is a new brand (or doing-business-as name) for FamilySearch. I am concerned by that copyright statement -- I think it is going to make it all the harder to explain to people that the content in a FamilySearch family tree is user-contributed (not the work of a Intellectual professional working for the LDS church).

Does anyone have background on what is going on with this new FamilySearch identity?

Comments

Ellen regarding the copyright branding on personal family trees: No disrespect intended and with utmost sincerity it boggles my mind that someone could interpret some of the family tree's I've seen in my own extended LDS Johnson family lines as being the result of intellect...

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Isn't there a lot of fanciful ideas, if not fancy footwork.  Everyone dreams they are connected to the famous (and most want to ignore their connections to the infamous.)

Answer 1

Looks like it's not new, exactly, though maybe newly extended to FamilySearch. It's the holding company used by the LDS church to hold its intellectual property (copyrights, trademarks, etc.) and it's existed for some time.

The FamilySearch Terms of Service have not changed since December, so there's no change to the legal rights and responsibilities on either side.

Comments

And see the bottom of this very Wikitree page, which states "Copyright 2008-2020 Interesting.com Inc." - which, incidentally, is a for-profit corporation, as opposed to Intellectual Reserve, Inc., which is a non-profit corporation.

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It seems to have originated in 1997.

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The "service" being provided is familysearch.org.  Up to 2008 it was new.familysearch.

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Thanks for the info. Before today, I had never seen a user-contributed online family tree given such a pretentious source citation.

"Copyright 2008-2020 Interesting.com Inc." does not convey that kind of false impression.

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"pretentious" in what way?

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To me, the assertion that the source of genealogical information is "© 2020 by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved. A service provided by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" is a pretense of highly reliable information quality. I do not believe that the LDS church is deliberately attempting to mislead...

Answer 2

Intellectual Reserve was incorporated in 1997.  So it's not actually new.

Comments

Thanks for the info. Before today, I had never seen a user-contributed online family tree given such a pretentious source citation.

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So, not like this one, then?

© 2008 - 2020 INTERESTING.COM, INC. CONTENT MAY BE COPYRIGHTED BY WIKITREE COMMUNITY MEMBERS.