phrase copyright question

I don't if F.A.G will win but I doubt you need the cost & aggravation...find something else
"Forever Alone" Creator Claims Copyright Infringement Against Team Meat | N4G

They can only copyright a phrase as far as it is related to business. If you write a book and title it "Forever alone", you're fine -- if you write an article and the phrase shows up in a paragraph, or even in the ad copy, such as in "To Joe, he was destined to be forever alone", you aren't doing anything wrong and nobody is going to bother you.

In a further example, the word "cure" itself" has been patented by the medical community in the US. You can get zapped real hard for calling anything a cure for anything if it's not one of the pharm products allowed for use by the FDA. However, if you talk about cures for boredom, cures for mediocracy, etc. nobody is going to bother you one whit about it.

In business, however, once something is trademarked, you are really poking the alligator when you use anything already in use. The danger grows the closer your product/business resembles that of the entity with the trademark. If there is a chance that customers will confuse your product with the tm owner's if you use the term, you are just courting disaster by using it.

Because this is such a frequent question -- and it bothers the heck out of me. Lets finally look at it another way.

Why would you want to use something already in use? Do you want to brand yourself as someone without a hint of creativity - or risk people thinking of another product when they see your business/product? What happens if they get a bad rep and you have "copied" them?

Business owners shouldn't be so worried about if they can copy something off of other businesses. They should be concerned about finding fresh innovative ways to set themselves apart from any other business. If your imagination is so weak you need to emulate others to get by, what's that say for your products and business?

In this instance, it wouldn't be "copyright" - it would be "trademark".

You can look up whether it's trademarked on the US registered trademark site. Not sure the exact URL off the top of my head - just google that and it will get you there.

If the business itself is trademarked they might still get upset if you use "their stuff" if using it causes a confusion in the customer's mind whether your site/product is connected to them in any way. If there isn't any similarity in what you are doing, since they've not trademarked the coined phrase, they probably won't give a squat either way about it. If they do harrange ya, just ask them for the trademark #. If your use pre-dates any patent, you will usually be okay, too, as far as lawsuits, but they can send you a notice that it's been trademarked and please stop using it. Then it goes to court if you really want it.

My answer completely rests on the assumption that "forever alone" is just a slogan they use and not a product name or business name. You might want to go to the official trademark site and read up on the info they have there about trademarks/trademarking. It doesn't take long on that site to get the feel for how trademarks work. I suggest the same for copyright. Anyone in business should know at least the fundamentals about both trademarking and copyrighting before they start choosing business and product names or posting/mailing/publishing content. It's just part of being a business owner.

Do it right from the get go and you will avoid some of the problems you see cropping up on the forum, and you also avoid having to tear stuff apart and start over.

IANAL, but I think we are mixing up three times of intellectual property in this discussion.

1. Copyright - protects works when in fixed form (e.g. books, software, music)

2. Trademark - used to identify the origin of goods

3. Patents - Protects inventions


The ones that you need to be concerned when dealing with words are trademarks and copyrights.

In the case of trademarks are often registered with the US government (registered trademarks), but they do not have to be! Many trademarks are not registered, so check the USPTO site is not definitive.