Source: https://fairuse.stanford.edu/2003/09/09/copyright_protection_for_short/
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 18:57:26+00:00

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“There’s a great power in words,” wrote Josh Billings, “if you don’t hitch too many of them together.” No doubt about it, a well-turned phrase can have a powerful effect on a reader. A judicious choice of words can result in the perfect punchline, an incisive aphorism, a moral tenet, or, as in the case of a haiku-beauty.
But short phrases-perhaps because they’re so easily severable from larger works-are commonly the subject of theft. They’re often plucked and recycled in other literary, musical or artistic works or on merchandise.
Copyright laws disfavor protection for short phrases. Such claims are viewed with suspicion by the Copyright Office, whose circulars state that, “… slogans, and other short phrases or expressions cannot be copyrighted.”  These rules are premised on two tenets of copyright law. First, copyright will not protect an idea. Phrases conveying an idea are typically expressed in a limited number of ways and, therefore, are not subject to copyright protection. Second, phrases are considered as common idioms of the English language and are therefore free to all. Granting a monopoly would eventually “checkmate the public”  and the purpose of a copyright clause to encourage creativity-would be defeated.
So how many words do you have to string together before you get copyright protection? 10? 20? 100? It’s not a matter of numbers. Whether you can stop someone else from using your literary phrases is dependent upon the uniqueness and value of the phrases as well as the way in which you (and the borrower) use them.
For example, in one case,  the author of a social history of Jewish migration to San Francisco asserted that factual details, historical events, and some phrases were duplicated in the defendant’s novel about a wealthy Jewish family. The defendant admitted consulting the plaintiff’s work and taking at least eight descriptive phrases including “hordes of gold seekers,” “the river wound its way between muddy banks crawling with alligators,” and “rekindle old memories.” The court of appeals considered the borrowing of phrases to be insubstantial, noted that facts and historic events are free for all to use, and ruled for the defendant.
(b) if a popular phrase is hijacked for a blatant commercial use-for example, using “E.T., Phone Home” on drinking mugs -courts are more likely to find infringement.
There are many exceptions to these rules. In the case of advertising or label copy, for example, when more than the advertising phrases are borrowed, for example, layout or visual imagery, then a court may be much more likely to protect one advertiser from infringement by another.  Similarly, even humdrum phrases such as, “Why are we giving away SOLEX Electric Toothbrush Sets for Only $3?” and, “This is NOT a misprint” may be protected against copying when they are selected and arranged to mimic a competitor’s advertisement.
In these sales-oriented cases, copyright is sometimes stretched to do the work of trademark law. In the world of trademarks, short phrases are protected if consumers associate them with particular goods or services. In some of the cases described above, the phrases were used for their associative or “endorsement” power and, under those conditions, courts may accept less significant similarities to justify a finding of copyright infringement.
Obviously, terse statements such as, “Contents Require Immediate Attention” or, “Gift Check Enclosed” do not exhibit sufficient originality.  But do statements of advertising copy, haikus, or jokes, all of which rely on brevity and simplicity, rise to the necessary level of originality?
In a 1979 case,  a company copied two of Brilliant’s phrases-“I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent” and “I have abandoned my search for truth and am now looking for a good fantasy”-and altered a third phrase, all for sale on t-shirt transfers.
The district court acknowledged that the phrases were distinguished by conciseness, cleverness, and a pointed observation, and ruled that they were protected by copyright. By fulfilling the higher creative standards of an epigram, Brilliant’s Pot-Shots also satisfied the inverse relationship between originality and length discussed by Judge Frank and Professor Nimmer.
The first three defenses have already been discussed, above. Fair use and parody are covered in considerable detail elsewhere on this Stanford Copyright and Fair Use website. However, it’s worth adding an additional comment or two.
Claiming fair use or parody as a defense has an unfortunate hitch. The only way to find out if you’re right is to have a court rule on the matter. From a real-world perspective, this often favors the litigant with the deepest pockets-that is the party who can last the longest in litigation. However, there are some cases where a borrower has a very strong argument that fair use will apply-for example, borrowing a few lyric lines of a song in a review or new article. But when the use of short phrases lacks some transformative value or fails to offer some insight or commentary-for example, copying phrases on a T-shirt-the fair use argument is harder to win.
Judge Frank’s observation in Heim v. Universal Pictures remains the most insightful guideline for the protection of short phrases-a literary phrase must be so idiosyncratic that its appearance in another work would preclude coincidence. What produces this idiosyncrasy? In parody, it is the interposition of something familiar with something incongruous. In a character phrase, such as “E.T. Phone Home,” it is the inseparable association between the words and the fictional personality. In an epigram, it is the demonstration of a highly structured creativity.
In order to guess how protectible a phrase may be, the question must be asked-as in the protection of characters-has enough development gone into the work so that a line can be drawn separating the author’s expression from that which is in the public domain? Wherever this line is drawn, it will seem arbitrary, but “that is no excuse for not drawing it . . ”  If an author has created a uniquely suggestive phrase, then the courts will protect it under copyright. But if an author’s literary phrase is merely a trivial variation on that which already belongs to the public, copyright will not extend.
 Though the Copyright Office circulars do not have the force of a statute, they are considered to be, “a fair summary of the law.”Kitchens of Sara Lee, Inc. v. Nifty Foods Corp., 266 F. 2d 541 (2d Cir. 1959); Ets-Hokin v. Skyy Spirits, Inc., 225 F.3d 1068 (9th Cir. 2003).
 That said, one court apparently felt that 54 words was enough. A 54-word “thank you” passage from a car dealership brochure was considered copyrightable and a competitor’s use of a similar thank you passage was an infringement. CRA Mktg., Inc. v. Brandow’s Fairway Chrysler-Plymouth-Jeep-Eagle, Inc., 1999 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11889 (E.D. Pa. 1999).
 For all rules there are exceptions (or aberrations). In a 2000 case, the author of a book, “Wall Street Money Machine,” claimed that motivational speaker Anthony Robbins used a few of his phrases in a “Financial Power” manual, given out at a Robbins seminar. (The phrases were based on metaphors comparing investing to driving a taxi.) The jury determined that Cook had a valid copyright and that there was infringement on two of the four copied phrases: “Money is made on the Meter Drop” and “No one I know has come up with a name for the type of investing I call `Rolling Stocks.’ It works on stock that roll up and down in repeated waves. . . . Some roll fast and some slow.” The Ninth Circuit upheld the damage award against Robbins for $655,000 but the case subsequently settled and the decision was withdrawn by the court. Cook v. Robbins, 232 F.3d 736 (9th Cir. 2001).
p;Alberto-Culver Co. v. Andrea Dumon, Inc., 466 F.2d 705, 710 (7th Cir., 1972).
 1 M. Nimmer, NIMMER ON COPYRIGHT 2.01[B] (1988).
 A British court reached a similar conclusion in Exxon Corp. v. Exxon Ins. Consulting int’l Ltd.  2 All E.R. 495, 504. FYI, In case you’re wondering, the word “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” was not an invented term when used in the song of the same name. Life Music, Inc. v. Wonderland Music, Co, 241 F. Supp. 653 (S.D. NY 1965).

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