Say, for example, If I want to call my book xxxx, but there's a song name or video game or company or anything with the same name, am I not allowed to use it. Should I use it even if I can or should I go for something more original? I'm just not sure and really want a title so I have something more to call it.
To use a popular one like, say STAR WARS, is not advisable. But it is not illegal.
Of course, if you did, some people might feel annoyed if they bought your book on Amazon and found it wasn't by Heinlein or Fleming. I'm a firm believer in original titles despite the acknowleded difficulties of dreaming them up.
Elements of titles can be protected from unauthorized use by Trademark law. For example, 007 and much of the Star Wars and Star Trek stuff is so covered. (In fact, as soon as movies or TV get hold of it, they seem to trademark everything, clearly so they can grab the merchandising revenues.)
Also, "For Dummies" is a registered trademark, so if you called it "Time Enough For Dummies" or "Diamonds are For Dummies" you'd find yourself receiving polite letters from the trademark owners, IDG Publishing.
...I clicked right on it.
I've regularly checked any available source for title duplication. Before the Internet's dawn, R.R. Bowker's Books in Print was my go-to source, and library catalogs.
One of the early benefits I got from appreciating Mr. Card's MICE concept was how titles reflect a story's primary orientation. I've found that many titles, if not all, say right up front whether a story's emphasis is milieu, idea, character, or event oriented.
Frank Herbert's Dune; milieu.
C.J. Cherryh's Cuckoo's Egg; idea.
Keith Laumer's Retief Unbound; character.
Anne McCaffrey's Red Star Rising; event.
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited March 02, 2009).]
I don't know of any other books titled "Dune" or "Retief Unbound," but I know a couple titled "Cuckoo's Egg," or some variant, and as for "Red Star Rising," the history of the Communist Party produced a lot of things with that title over the years (I'd assume it was McCaffrey's little joke).
I can't recall actually buying a book and finding out it was something else with the identical title. If you picked up a book titled "Retief Unbound," you should know at a glance whether, say, it's SF about Laumer's diplomat or a sports book about the golfer with the same name.
I once jested that I would write a book called The Hobbit. However, this falls within copyright boundaries. Since Hobbits are named after a fictional town "Hobbiton", the name of the race was copyrighted. Therefore you can't call a character "a Hobbit". D&D got past this by using the word "halfling" in their games, as have many fantasy novels.
One other thing: Though the words "Star Wars" could not be copyrighted as a title, Lucas did a slick trick. He formed the letters "STAR WARS" in such a way that they formed a logo. Therefore any official Star Wars product has that combined "ST","A","RS","W","A","RS". Other books/movies/shows have done the same.
This still falls under the realm of fictional material, because it would be an encyclopedia that only references a fictional world.
He could write a book about his experience of being rolled by Rowling, but there is an area I failed to mention regarding libel and defamation, which involves reasonable believability. This is what got Larry Flynt off (no pun intended) regarding the Jerry Falwell lawsuit. If there is reasonable believability and could be proven untrue, then there could be libel problems. If non-fiction is presented as critique or satire, it falls under free speech laws.
Edited to correct name of Larry Flynt.
[This message has been edited by philocinemas (edited March 03, 2009).]
To put it simply, JKR felt that he added too little original material, and tried to make money by copying too much of her work without permission. (You can copy some under the "fair use" provision of copyright law, for example in critical reviews of a work.) The final settlement was a small amount of money. JKR said it was about enforcing the principles of copyright, not just for herself, but all of us.
quote:
During the trial, Rowling said on the stand, "I never ever once wanted to stop Mr. Vander Ark from doing his own guide, never ever. Do your book, but, please, change it so it does not take as much of my work."...
On 8 September 2008, Judge Patterson decided the case in Rowling's favor, claiming that "because the Lexicon appropriates too much of Rowling's creative work for its purposes as a reference guide, a permanent injunction must issue to prevent the possible proliferation of works that do the same and thus deplete the incentive for original authors to create new works."
...
In a statement released to the media, Rowling responded favorably to the verdict: "I took no pleasure at all in bringing legal action and am delighted that this issue has been resolved favorably. I went to court to uphold the right of authors everywhere to protect their own original work. The court has upheld that right. The proposed book took an enormous amount of my work and added virtually no original commentary of its own. Many books have been published which offer original insights into the world of Harry Potter. The Lexicon just is not one of them."
More at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros._and_J._K._Rowling_vs._RDR_Books where Wikipedia, on this topic at least, gives what I think is a reasonably objective summary of what happened.
I agree that this was her right as the author, but the way it was done appeared to be pernicious.
As the Wikipedia piece says, she was quite happy with the encyclopedia online for as long as it was not-for-profit. She objected when he decided to try to make money from his copying of her work. She claimed in court that his encyclopedia would compete with her own, and reduce the revenues from it which she planned to donate to charity.
It wasn't at all pernicious. He knew that what he was doing could violate copyright and made the point in court that he had requested permission from Rowling and from the movie publishers to use their work on the website. They had agreed, but for not-for-profit purposes. The website carried advertizing to cover the costs of the site itself, but not for profit.
Vander Ark knew copyright law, knew that publishing for profit was problematic. I cannot see, in the reports I've read, that JKR was either legally or morally wrong; her position was clear at all times, and in line with the principle and ethic that an author owns her work.
As for the money, no, she doesn't need it, but she said it wasn't about the money, and the court settlement reflected that with the small amounts it awarded. Besides, why should being rich reduce one's rights? If she had not fought it, there would now be thousands of illegal copies of her work on the market, making money for plagiarists.
I think the moral of this story is that to put large amounts of work into a piece that violates someone else's copyright is a fool's errand if, at the end of the day, one wants to earn money from it.
[This message has been edited by TaleSpinner (edited March 04, 2009).]
Stephen King came to an agreement with the guy that did a lot of work on the Dark Tower mythology. Rowling could have done the same, but chose not to. That's her right as the author of the characters, but it's still kind of icky.
In some sense that's true, because she was planning to donate the proceeds of her own encyclopedia to charity. If she doesn't write it, (her plans to do so seem to have been abandoned because of the energy she spent fighting the court case) the Lexicon will have deprived charities of that revenue. (And let's not forget she donates time and money to charities anyhow; this would have been more.)
Quite why one party should be regarded as being unable to come to an agreement which, by definition, requires both parties to agree bemuses me, especially when the party of the first part is the originator of the work, and the party of the second part copied large chunks of it.
In fact, each party claims to have tried to come to agreement with the other ouit of Court:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/mar/11/harrypotter.law
It's not clear to me how one can decide whether one party or the other is more at fault unless one was party to the negotiations between the parties.
Agreements are hard to forge with people who are insincere, and how's this for a demonstration of insincerity (assuming it's all true): [from the Guardian article]
quote:What is clear is that Vander Ark had previously asked CLLA if he could collaborate with Rowling on a Potter encyclopedia, and been turned down, and had also suggested to third parties, via email, that he thought publishing the Lexicon without Rowling's permission would be an infringement of her copyright. For Rowling and Warner Bros, this is a virtual admission of guilt. "Not so," says Vander Ark. "I'm not the defendant in this case and I'm not a legal expert. I'd never taken any legal advice over the encyclopedia, so what I might have thought was uninformed and irrelevant."
He got it right in his e-mails, and the Court agreed. (For me, finding ways to reinterpret the law based, not upon its intent but some arcane way of reinterpreting the words of the law, is insincerity. I believe the principle of interpreting law in a manner consistent with its intent is stronger in UK law than US, but I'm not sure. In the UK, clarifications of "intent" are built up through case law.)
An agreement of sorts was agreed, by the party of the second part if not the first, by publishing a version "stripped of the material a US judge objected to in order to make it publishable".
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/03/potter_lexicon/
In other words, the version that was eventually published by the party of the second part respected the copyright owned by the party of the first part, as upheld by the Judge.
According to the publisher, it includes "extensive new commentary, which does not appear on Vander Ark's Harry Potter Lexicon website".
http://www.rdrbooks.com/books/lexicon.html
So the party of the second part was forced by the Court to write something original and everybody lived happily ever after.
[This message has been edited by TaleSpinner (edited March 04, 2009).]
I think she has done an excellent job in making one of the most appealing characters within one of the most imaginative fantasy worlds ever. Her stories (personal and fictional) are very inspiring.
However, I looked up the Wikipedia article you mentioned, and it would appear that she had very positive things to say about the project as early as 2004 and that it had been accruing revenue even before then. As of Oct, 2007 it had made 3,000 pounds - (interjecting a facetious "Wow!"). It wasn't until he wanted to put the information in book form that she had a problem with it.
To me, that doesn't ring of someone defending copyright laws for all writers, but instead someone who is defending their own purse. This was every bit her right to do, but it appeared to me that Mr. Vander Ark felt he had her blessing. That's why I used the word "pernicious".
Possibly, their mutual failings were in being too trusting of each other. She in thinking it was an innocent fan website; he in that she appeared to be approving of his work. I also suspect Warner Brothers had quite a deal of influence in it.
He eventually was able to have a shorter version of his book approved and published with no harm and no foul (just a lot of grief).
But maybe enough has been said, and we can get back to the original topic (if enough hasn't been said about that, too)?
I searched some titles that were already discussed in this topic. While there weren't any other books entitle Dune, there are three albums and a band who share the name. Certainly some titles are more common than others, ("Stand by Me" turns up over a dozen different songs, movies, etc.), and some titles are more unique (I doubt you will find The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul resued as a title for anything but productions related to Douglas Adams' Novel, wikipedia doesn't even offer to a disambiguation).
Titles that do not include proper names (or copyrighted names)are free to be repeated, and often are. I wouldn't worry so much about what your title is or whether it has ever been used before. I always feel that the most important thing about the title is that it fits your story like a well tailored suit. Of course "fit" is a term that may also need to be disambiguated.