>>If so, does this also give you ownership of derivatives of original phrase
>>being printed onto apparel (i.e. Everyone Loves An Irish Girl/Italian
>>Girl/Southern Girl ect.)? Another possible way for one to protect ones
>>self in this sense may be unfair competition law, but I have not been able
>>to find much to concretely apply to this example.
>
>The phrases aren't protectible so there wouldn't be an unfair competition
>claim. Unless there are trademark issues.
>The answers to your other questions are really said above. There is one
>guy who's managed to register copyright on some phrases but I don't believe
>anyone else has.
>
>Word of warning: Be careful of parody shirts/bumper stickers. Companies
>who are being parodied tend to get crabby and if the parody includes a drug
>or sexual reference, they get really really crabby.
>
>Carol Busby
>--
>Carol A. Busby
>Attorney at Law
>875 Country Club Road
>Eugene, OR 97401-2255
>541-484-6860; fax: 541-687-1891
>carol[_at_]drogon.com
Even though phrases cannot be copyrighted, wouldnt someone taking the exact same phrase from the original author and producing them in the same manner (i.e. t-shirts) in their area still be considered unfair competition? (I apologize if the answer is obvious, I am just not very well read in unfair competition law)
Knowing that phrases cannot be copyrighted, and if producing the exact same phrase on the same medium of expression (t-shirts) for sale does not qualify as unfair competition, then why do these companies place a copyright at the bottom of the phrase? Like "copyright 2005 John Doe Inc." Is this just to make people think it is possible for them to own a copyright and discourage others from printing the same thing? Is it perfectly fine for them to lable it as copyrighted when it is not? If it is just to discourage people and gives them no real protection, then can someone just look at online stores that sell t-shirts with comical phrases on them and then just print the same comical phrases themselves for sale?
I'm familiar with difficult in using parody with big corporations. Like the
man that made "Mike" shirts with the swoosh to sell to people named Mike.
After an appeal he won on the grounds that it was a parody and people would
likely not be confused and think it was really a shirt from NIKE. I would
rather not test my luck against companies such as this though. Although I
am very confident in my ability to form legitamite parody, that does not tie
the company with drugs or anything actually negative to their image, even
winning a case the company could bring against myself would still leave me
with large legal bills.
Now can geographic entities (cities, counties, states, countries) make
claims against the selling t-shirts that use there name? Even if it is
negative like "Texas Sucks!" (no offence to anyone from texas, it is just
something I have seen), or relates the city or state to drugs, alcohol,
ect.? This is an important question for me personaly because I live in, and
will sell products in Wisconsin. Where any joke to be had on either state
or any city within it involves alcohol, or suggests the use of alcohol.
On a side note I would like to know how a man did come to obtain copyrights to phrases. Could you point us in the direction of the material?
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