On 8/13/98, Daniel J. Schaeffer <daniel_schaeffer[_at_]kirkland.com> wrote:
>
> There is no reported case in the U.S. entitled "Brilliant v. W.B.
> Enterprises." In fact, of 47 cases (federal and state) reported in
> Westlaw whose titles contain the word "Brilliant," not one involves
> Ashleigh Brilliant.
You forgot Lexis ( :-) ), but as you can see from Bob Cumbow's post, it ain't much of an opinion.
> I am not aware of any case law supporting the protection of aphorisms,
> epigrams, sayings and the like. The closest case I am aware of is the
> recent Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. v. Jostens, Inc., 988 F.Supp. 289
> (S.D.N.Y. 1997), in which the court held that an ad campaign featuring
> the slogan "If You Don't Stand For Something, You'll Fall For Anything"
> did not infringe the copyright in a song entitled "You've Got To Stand
> For Something," which contains the line "You've got to stand for
> something or you'll fall for anything" several times. I note that the
> court implied that certain short phrases may be entitled to copyright
> protection: "While especially creative phrases may be protected, there
> is nothing unique about the use of standing/falling imagery to convey
> the importance of living a principled life." (Id. at 294.)
It seems to me that even if this is a two-dimensional continuum, one dimension being length and the other dimension being creativity, that at some point, no matter how creative the saying is, the shortness of the phrase will doom the saying to the public domain. We should come up with a number. Should it be characters or words? :-)
> What this says to me is that (i) Ashleigh Brilliant may have some
> protectable interest in a particular turn of phrase, but he'd probably
> have a hard time protecting it in court; and (ii) he seems to have
> become an expert at extracting nuisance payments anyway.
Sounds right to me.
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