title protection?

What is "title protection" and what is its relation to copyright law?

I thought that titles of works were not copyrightable in the U.S. But somehow trademark law is extending to book titles, and disputes are now rampant on the web internationally.

I refer you to the long history of IDG's attempt to enforce property rights to the "...FOR DUMMIES (R)" trademark.

A recent instance can be seen by reading the correspondence from:

   http://www.octapod.org.au/dummies/

(select the image to go to the discussion).

In that case the issue was that IDG ignored the defense of the web site owner that the site was non-commercial.

However, another case, this time in Sweden rather than Australia, at

   http://www.users.one.se/~feltby/idgb_smells/shortstory.html

indicates that IDG claims not only registered trademark property rights, but also something called "title protection." What is that in law?

In any case, the "...FOR DUMMIES (R)" titles were not used before November, 1991, but in March, 1990, Ten Speed Press published the second edition of a book called "Auto Repair for Dummies."

I can understand how a big corporation like IDG would wish to hire lawyers to protect its "intellectual property." But in this case it is making a fool of itself and opening itself up to considerable parody. I can't see that these users of the English phrase intend to diminish IDG's rights nor to confuse anyone by using it. Certainly none of them so far is using it to make money or compete with IDG.

A footnote: when I worked as a newspaper reporter years ago the term "dummy" or "dumb" was already considered offensive because it implied that people with hearing loss were stupid. It's too bad that the English language is being privatized and so words only mean what their owners wish them to mean.

-- 
"Eric"  Eric Eldred  Eldritch Press
mailto:Eldred[_at_]EldritchPress.org
http://www.eldritchpress.org/EricEldred.vcf