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I am planning to use the name of a book (about 3-4 yrs old) as the tag line of my website. Its three words long. What are the IP issues here, how do i know if i can use it legally or if the author doesn't allow the name to be used as the tag line of my website. thanks in advance. |
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You need to be careful as to how you use any work that someone else has copyrighted but it appears that titles of books seem to be a little trickier that other works. This article over at Pub Law seems to say that titles are not protected as copyrighted material (Taken from Pub Law reference below): "Copyright Office Regulations and judicial decisions have made it clear that titles are only the equivalent of short slogans and therefore a title does not contain sufficient expression to be worthy of copyright protection" Now, the title could be a trademark but that seems to only apply to a series of books not a single title. Again, same Pub Law article quote: "A publisher cannot obtain federal trademark registration for a single title, but a series title may be federally registered." I guess you need to figure out if the author either registered the title as a trademark (since it might be used to identify something else) or it's a series of books. You can search for trademarks here. This is a pretty interesting question since it is not handled consistently. |
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Have you considered doing a trademark search? I would also review the trademark faq to get some ideas about the validity of using a pre-existing phrase. |
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Have a back up name planned... but go for it. Then if you get contacted you can take it down and tell the press what happened and use the whole experience as a marketing tool to promote your website. |
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