Re: Aphorisms and Copyright

On 8/19/98, Robert Cumbow <cumbr[_at_]perkinscoie.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, August 18, 1998, Michael Scarpitti <mscarpit[_at_]asnt.org>
> >
> > On Tue, 18 Aug 1998, Howard G. Zaharoff <hgz[_at_]buslaw128.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On 8/13/98, Bob Stock <bstock[_at_]ucla.edu> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Ashleigh Brilliant comes up with pithy sayings and registers them
> > > > with the US Copyright Office. To find out more about Brilliant,
> > > > you can take a peek at his website at:
> > > >
> > > > http://ashleighbrilliant.com/
> > >
> > > As for the potential copyrightable of short works (in this case,
> > > one-liners) see Foxworthy v. Custom Tees, 879 F. Supp 1200, 1219.
> >
> > The (not so?) obvious answer is to collect all the aphorisms together
> > in a single volume, like Nietzsche did.
>
>
> Not so. The resultant copyright would protect the collection, but
> would not protect any one individual aphorism from being used on a
> t-shirt without authorization, which is clearly what Mr Brilliant
> sought to prevent.

You can't be sure of that. If I own a copyright in a collection of my aphorisms, and you snag one of them for a T-shirt, I can make a prima facie case of copyright infringement -- you directly copied part of my copyrighted work. You may have a fair use defense, but it's not a lock. (You're not going to claim that the copyright in a book does not protect against partial copying, are you?)

Daniel J. Schaeffer
<daniel_schaeffer[_at_]kirkland.com> Received on Wed Aug 19 1998 - 22:57:20 GMT