Copyright infringement?

Question

I am designing a poster for a non-profit org. The pitch I would like to use happens to be an album title. Would this violate copyright infringement? Any suggestions? How different does it have to be? It's only 3 words.

Answer 1

Titles of works cannot be copyrighted. However I would be concerned that your "non-profit" organization may have a different taste in music, and find the reference unacceptable. Any slogan that brings up associations not related to the purpose of the organization is a poor choice.

Answer 2

Easy Answer:

It depends whether the three words on the album cover were capable of being copyrighted. In order to be protected by the copyright laws, a work must be unique enough that it actually adds something more than trivial variation or addition to those writings already in the public domain.

"Grand Funk Lives" would be unique and copyrightable (and it includes a trademark, "Grand Funk." An album called "The Dog Died" or "A Song Album" would not be so unique that it would be entitled to copyright protection.

Make sure the album title is not a trademark. Then, determine how "unique" and "original" it is. A google search for the three word phrase might help. If lots of different people are using it for a lot of different things, it is probably not a copyrighted expression. Make sure the different uses are not "with permission."

If this title is unique enough that you knew it was an album title, then I'd watch out.

You can stop reading here unless you have some morbid interest in case law. I pasted this from a brief we filed in a copyright case battling over whether the materials in dispute were "original" works.

In copyright law, the careful elaboration of private and public rights includes whether the work is one of sufficient original expression to warrant protection. Protection of an unoriginal expression would do nothing to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." To the contrary, by making it difficult or impossible to use expressions that were previously available, such protection would hinder new intellectual work. Accordingly, the Supreme Court has long interpreted the terms "Authors" and "Writings" to "presuppose a degree of originality." Feist Publ'ns, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Serv. Co., Inc., 499 U.S. 340, 345 (1991), citing Trade-Mark Cases, 100 U.S. 82, 94 (1879) ("while the word writings may be liberally construed * * * it is only such as are original, and are founded in the creative powers of the mind") and Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony, 111 U.S. 53, 58-59 (1884) (copyright limited to "original intellectual conceptions of the author"). For purposes of copyright law, a work is not original unless it "possesses at least some minimal degree of creativity." Feist, 499 U.S. at 345. Moreover, even if a work as a whole has sufficient creativity to be protectable, the law's concern for promoting public use of existing intellectual knowledge limits that protection to "those components of a work that are original to the author." Id. at 348.

In other words, the author must add 'some substantial, not merely trivial, originality.' Chamberlin v. Uris Sales Corp., 150 F.2d 512, 513 (2nd Cir. 1945). The variation must be meaningful and must result from original creative work on the author's part. Amsterdam v. Triangle Publications, Inc., 189 F.2d 104 (3rd Cir. 1951); Andrews v. Guenther Publishing Co., 60 F.2d 555 (S.D.N.Y. 1932); Jeweler's Circular Publishing Co. v. Keystone Publishing Co., 281 F. 83 (2nd Cir. 1922), cert. denied, 259 U.S. 581, 42 S.Ct. 464, 66 L.Ed. 1074; McIntyre v. Double-A Music Corp., 179 F.Supp. 160 (S.D.Cal. 1959); Alva Studios, Inc. v. Winninger, 177 F.Supp. 265 (S.D.N.Y. 1959); Smith v. George E. Muehlebach Brewing Co., 140 F.Supp. 729 (W.D.Mo. 1956).